Door Sign Reference

[deck5]

Couple of small changes, and I've updated the table in the first post with a PDF.

[deck5]

Messing about with dimensions; I think the frame may be closer to 1" than my earlier estimate of 1.25".

[Rassilons Rod]

That looks superb!

[Volpone]

I've got a question for anyone that wants to take a shot at it:  Does anyone have an idea why they radically changed the door sign away from an actual police box during the Troughton episodes?  I mean, from the new threads on actual, specific boxes, it looks like most of them were demolished in 1970.  So a police box was still a pretty common sight while the Second Doctor was around.  Why the switch to a blue sign with white lettering? 

Here in the USA the squad car for "Adam-12" had bogus numbering on the roof so that, when it was on the street, LAPD aircraft didn't think it was an actual police car for dispatch purposes.  Could it have been something like that?  Was it simply a photography issue, where the contrasting sign was problematic for lighting and such?  Or was it as simple as that they had a blue panel handy so they used that instead of a white one?  It interests me, because before coming to this board someone like me that grew up in the 1980s, watching PBS (and later the 1996 movie) would think the blue sign was the "proper" one.

[galacticprobe]

Well, when you consider that the blue panel they started using in the Troughton era was a "flat" panel (i.e. no frame, and was level with the raised stiles) I doubt it came from a blue police box panel they had on hand. My guess is, that like with the Hartnell era respray that changed the window color from white to blue, it was a lack of communication or detail given to the prop department which caused the change.

In the Pertwee era that phone panel changed to a black background, but kept the exact same white font for the lettering. Don't know the cause for that, but it lasted like that until the Tom Baker era ("Seeds of Doom", I think was this one's last appearance, in a sort of cameo at the very end). After that is when the phone panel returned to having a blue background, and regained its frame.

The return of the frame was probably from instructions to the props department, but nothing may have been said about the color of the background. And the props guys may just have thought to make the background blue to match the rest of the prop. And of course this is all guesswork on my part, but I'm staking that stab at it. Anyone please correct me of I'm wrong, but this is the best guess I've got so far from browsing around and looking through the history of the TARDIS prop on kiwidoc's site.

Dino.

[deck5]

Managed to pull this from the AUC DVD -- it's enhanced as far as my tools can take it.  Brachacki door sign, mark 2.

[deck5]

The Mark 1 Brachacki sign, again enhanced and enlarged as far as I can take it.  This is from the studio cut of the first episode.  The symmetrical screw holes on both sides of the frame suggest he tried the handle on both the left and the right before giving it up as a bad idea.

[galacticprobe]

You're right about that. (Well, at least about the moving about of the door handles, anyway.) There was some discussion on the early TARDIS and her door handles here http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=877.0, here http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=893.0 (a little more than half way down the page, with markofrani pointing out the screw holes), and especially here http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=212.0 (most helpful info is on pages 1 and 2) where our old friend Purpleblancmange highlighted different locations for both the door's handles and hinges, and again the screw holes left by those when they were relocated before being finally removed altogether from the production - as opposed to the Pilot - Brachacki TARDIS.

Dino.

[starcross]

This little bit of research covers the details for signs made during 1953.
This is what I would recognize as the most common sign used on Police Posts.
In fact there is one part of a sign made to this standard held by chriskingbees.

Unfortunately I was unable  to locate Standard D 1000, nor was I able to locate a colour sample from BS 381C (1948) so the Internet colour sample may not be as close as it should be. This BS 381C standard was responsible for almost all street furniture paint. Met Police Boxes should be 106 Royal Blue, and City of London Should be 107 Strong Blue. I have real antique paint samples that are in great condition off the police post parts I own. However I need to find good samples of the 1948 standard paint to match them against. It should exist in a Book format, and I have seen the books used to figure out how to paint antique aircraft, but this lead needs to be followed up by someone in the UK as the internet has not served me well in this search.

Specification S 440A - Larger


Drg 90316 - March 7th, 1953 - Larger


Shard owned by chriskingbees - Source
You can see from the shard from an original sign, that the paint is raised on the perspex.


BS 381c - 104 - Azure Blue (Source)


Perspex-opal-040 - Source

[hb88banzai]

Very nice!

Small problem with the link for a larger image for the first spec sheet - url is for Flickr, but it is apparently a protected page as it forwards to a sign-in page.

Very interesting that they give specs for both Perspex and glass (whatever type of glass Armourclad Plate was). Had never seen the word "arrissed" before - just means the sharp edges have been rounded, but cool word.

Colour specs especially useful. Wish we had the same for the London Post and Met Post body colours and the various shades of the Met Boxes.

Extremely useful link to the e-paint.co.uk site. May have to shell out for a printed colour chart fan as all Met and CoL specs were probably from the BS 381C (1948) Colour Chart or its immediate predecessor.

[Mark]

excellent resourses there Starcross, and again thanks to KB for sharing the original panel piece.

Interesting to note that the Crich box has a glass panel and the printed letters are on the reverse which would make sense from the description "....integrally printed on the glass panel and glazed".

The same technique appears to be same on the Police Box signs the blue is of course the background with the lettering clear and then the whole thing glazed in white.

I always presumed that the perspex version was a later cost saving version however this shows they were both available at the same time (1953).

[deck5]

... and then the whole thing glazed in white.

I believe 'glazed' in this context refers to the fitting of the panel into its frame, and not a surface treatment.

[Mark]

Hadn't thought about that interpretation of the glazed bit, you may be right however as far as I gather the documents above are intended for producing the sign only with fitting details being on a seperate sheet altogether.

Also why explain the other meaning of glazed ie putting a window in etc under the "material and lettering" heading?

[galacticprobe]

Very nice!

Small problem with the link for a larger image for the first spec sheet - url is for Flickr, but it is apparently a protected page as it forwards to a sign-in page.

Does this help get you to the image?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/etas/7997424059/sizes/h/in/photostream/

Dino.

[hb88banzai]

Thanks, but unnecessary - the original link appears to have been corrected subsequent to my post.