Which are the most recent/accurate Yardley Jones plans?

Started by evil bob, Aug 25, 2017, 05:06 pm

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tony farrell

Aug 30, 2017, 12:25 pm #15 Last Edit: Aug 30, 2017, 12:36 pm by Tony Farrell
Thank you Typeforty - glad they're of use!

In addition to including actual measurements from the TY-J prop, I took advantage of the fact that Crispin/Scarfwearer has increased the Forum's upload limit; this increase has allowed me to replace the old (slightly fuzzy) JPG versions of the plans with shiny new HD PNG versions which I think look much crisper and (to my eye) much better.  :)

T

tony farrell

I've been asked to clarify that the last diagram in my previous post shows both boxes side-by-side rather than a front and side view of the 1983 box which was modified for "The Trial of a Time Lord".

I've amended the description in the diagram accordingly (the older box with the shallower base and 'all calls' phone panel is on the left).

TY-J Trial of a Time Lord.png

T

Rassilons Rod

In the cities in the streets there's a tension you can feel,
The breaking strain is fast approaching, guns and riots.
Politicians gamble and lie to save their skins,
And the press get fed the scapegoats,
Public Enema Number One.

andrewkent

Brilliant work Tony.  I visited DWE a few months ago and was struck by the beautiful design of this box.  Vastly superior to all the other boxes at the Experience.

lespaceplie

One quandary: There was more than one roof, of course, but here's evidence that one of them had a different slope for the top. The position of the camera is not high enough to significantly recede the measures, and each of the marked corners lie in the same plane.

topslope.jpg

lespaceplie

Fantastic as always, Tony! In the meantime the PDF has been amended. Instead of making it exactly like the prop in The Experience, I've left it with slight streamlining for an Imperial build. This smooths over any differences between the front and sides, ignores the fact that the windows are a little taller than the rest of the panels and nudges the door height to 80 inches - in other words it's the plans that were originally drawn informed by some of the details as actually built.

tony farrell

Aug 31, 2017, 12:00 am #21 Last Edit: Aug 31, 2017, 12:44 am by Tony Farrell
Hi Gene,

If you read the main article, you'll see that I've acknowledged the idiosyncrasies in the Mark II TY-J prop as it is currently - complete with mismatched dimensions for the sizes of the panels in the doors i.e., the left-hand door has a taller window than the right-hand door. I then went on to check these mis-matched dimensions against the earliest appearances of the prop and it seems that the door with the slightly taller window is, in fact, a match for the earliest version of the prop (the windows on the sides of the Cardiff box are all the slightly taller version too and this matches photos from such adventures as Resurrection of the Daleks). Given this, I concluded that the door with the shorter window is 'the odd one out' (and is therefore probably a replacement).

I've just had a look at your PDF and - unless I've looked at the wrong version - it shows the doors as 78" which is within a couple of millimeters of my dimension of 1980 mm (78" = 1981.2 mm). In addition the 1980 and the 1983 BBC plans show the doors as 78" tall but in your post above you state 80". Are there two versions of your PDF?

T

lespaceplie

Aug 31, 2017, 02:59 am #22 Last Edit: Aug 31, 2017, 03:14 pm by lespaceplie
No multiple versions. 80" is just a typo that populated itself in my poor brain. 78" is the intention, which thankfully is in the PDF.

I know you addressed the wonkiness. I only wanted the PDF to be practical. In fact, this one will get disclaimers and more detail in the document itself. In the meantime a metric version has been whipped together that honestly was easier to streamline. That will become page 2 of the PDF.

tony farrell

Aug 31, 2017, 04:25 pm #23 Last Edit: Aug 31, 2017, 04:28 pm by Tony Farrell
The reason I chose metric dimensions for my TY-J plans (despite the fact that the BBC originals were stated in imperial) is the fact that between 1969 and 1975, the British construction industry converted to metric standards. This conversion was complete by 1975 and - whilst imperial dimension timber could (& can still) be bought in the UK - suppliers of timber were subject to legally-binding standards which covered both the moisture content, uses and crucially the stated sizes of their products. Thus, it was far more likely in 1980 for the BBC to have used metric dimensions - for example 6" = 152.4 millimeters and the nearest metric equivalent would be 150 mm. Indeed, from the mid-1960s, the BBC used metric feet for everything that was done in Television Centre (a metric foot equals 300 mm whilst an imperial foot equals 304.5 mm).

Quote from: lespaceplie on Aug 30, 2017, 10:06 pm
One quandary: There was more than one roof, of course, but here's evidence that one of them had a different slope for the top. The position of the camera is not high enough to significantly recede the measures, and each of the marked corners lie in the same plane.

topslope.jpg


I didn't have time to reply to this last night as I wanted to get a clean screen-grab for comparison:

Firstly a publicity photo of the same TY-J box as used in Peter Davison's first in-costume photo-call:

ccd7c8aca025bac79740c93f70a0962c_zps549a6b36.jpg

Now a close-up of the roof from the same photo:

70.png

(There are numerous photos and screen-grabs available on page six of http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=6965.0 which provide supporting evidence as to the accuracy of these dimensions including the fact that the TY-J prop that is in Cardiff was measured.)

Now the screen-grab from "The Visitation" (which is the same prop as used in the Davison photocall):

vis4.png

(Please open the picture in a separate tab and use the 'magnifying glass' to see it at full-size.)

I've placed a clean copy of the screen-grab next to the same screen-grab where I've followed Gene/Lespaceplie's example and drawn horizontal lines to mark the position of the roof and lamp relative to each other. (I've included a clean version of the screen-grab so that people can judge the accuracy with which I've drawn the horizontal lines.)

The sloping roof section is the same height as the square section beneath it i.e., 34 pixels. From the Davison photo-call picture, the square roof section is 65 mm tall (in the screen-grab, 34 pixels therefore equals 65 mm).

So, Gene, I get a slightly different result to you; I think the sloping roof and the square section beneath it were the same height - they're both 65 millimeters or 2.56"!  :)

T

evil bob

Wow, Tony, this is above and beyond what I expected!  I was just hoping to get the height to width ratios right.

lespaceplie

Aug 31, 2017, 05:42 pm #25 Last Edit: Aug 31, 2017, 05:45 pm by lespaceplie
Quote from: Tony Farrell on Aug 31, 2017, 04:25 pm
The reason I chose metric dimensions...
...suppliers of timber were subject to legally-binding standards...


Not that it really matters for this prop, but as I mentioned earlier, standard metric timber is still really Imperial. The dims are simply approximated and labeled, but the milling is not different. Framing for house building is often still specced in Imperial dims to this day (in Canada, at least). Much like Imperial timber, metric timber is also subject to weird nominal sizing. Just as a 2x4 is not 2" by 4", a metric 1.25x2.5 ply sheet is actually 1.22m x 2.44m, which is itself still an Imperial 4 x 8 foot sheet. As an international industry, I suppose it proved too difficult to truly create a new standard. Synthetic materials, on the other hand, are and have pretty much always been metric even in countries that previously preferred Imperial.

As for the roof, it's again a matter of the low res proving nothing. I used the same reference photo (reduced for posting) and judged different points to place the lines than you did because the focus isn't sharp. It looks as though your middle horizontal line lies above the actual corner, but I digress.

tony farrell

Quote from: evil bob on Aug 31, 2017, 05:21 pm
Wow, Tony, this is above and beyond what I expected!  I was just hoping to get the height to width ratios right.


I aim to please - you're very welcome Bob. (I may call you Bob, mayn't I?)

If you read through http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=6965.0 (towards the end of page six) you'll see the principal dimensions have actually been measured from the prop itself.

If you want to build an idealised version, I'd suggest you follow Lespaceplie's PDF, if you want to know what was actually built, I'd suggest you use my plans. (I'll add an overhead view to the  plans in the TY-J article in the next few days.) :)

T

typeforte

I'm wondering at the moment about the windows/window frames.  Specifically, the dims of the frame, it's thickness, and the position of the frame and the 'glazing' relative to the depth of the recess (allegedly 20mm).

Based on the pics I've seen and studied, the glazing looks to have been applied to the rear (internal) face of the moulded panels, and so does not occupy any of the recess's depth.  The frames, on the other hand do look as though they sit in the recess, by how much I'm unsure.  

Anyone have any observations to venture?

I suppose the other question here is whether the frame dims differed across the various TYJ versions.

TF.

lespaceplie

The PDF has been updated one mo' time. There's no reason to deviate from the roof measurements since a prop has been measured. A note has been added regarding the asymmetry of the corner posts and the door gaps. The windows are subject to revision. It turns out the window dims are very simple in metric but less so in Imperial, which is pretty much fudged with no labels for the moment. The signage and hardware options are due to be added as well.

tony farrell

Quote from: typeforte on Aug 31, 2017, 06:51 pm
I'm wondering at the moment about the windows/window frames.  Specifically, the dims of the frame, it's thickness, and the position of the frame and the 'glazing' relative to the depth of the recess (allegedly 20mm).

Based on the pics I've seen and studied, the glazing looks to have been applied to the rear (internal) face of the moulded panels, and so does not occupy any of the recess's depth.  The frames, on the other hand do look as though they sit in the recess, by how much I'm unsure.  


I agree with that Typeforte - the depth of the panel recesses are 25 mm deep (measured dimension) but the window frames have been mounted further forward than the rear 'face' of the panel and are therefore 20 mm deep. (I would guess that the original master 'plugs' for the windows were made from 5 mm thick timber and once the cast was made, they simply cut out the rear (recessed) parts of the resultant mould to create the holes for the Perspex window panes.)

Similarly, the phone panels are mounted on the rear of the panel recesses. Whilst I don't think either of the phone panels on the Cardiff prop are original, I do think Mark Barton Hill has tried to get them as close as possible to the originals: The original "Urgent Calls" phone panel had a mitred frame and was shallower than the "All Calls" phone panel which had a quite crude (thicker) frame. I estimate that the original "Urgent Calls" panel had a frame which was 20 mm deep whilst the "All Calls" version seems to have been 25 mm deep.

As regards whether the thicknesses of the windows' "mullions" ever varied, if you look, several were broken by the time of Peter Davison's photo-call and the first TY-J prop was either re-built or very-heavily modified at the start of Season 20 before a second box was built for "Planet of Fire". To add to the confusion, at least one wooden door (probably two) was built for "Delta and the Bannermen" and this door differed quite markedly in its dimensions from the fibreglass one with which it was sometimes paired.

If you look at the prop now, the left-hand 'front' door's window is 384 to 385 mm tall whereas the right-hand door's window is 380 mm tall. Whether the right-hand door's differing dimensions are due to one of the numerous restorations or because it was made differently is anyone's guess!

And, this is the 'rub', the various Tardises were made by the BBC's Scenery Department in the days before computer-controlled laser cutting. The wooden 'plugs' from which the moulded parts of the TY-J Tardis were drawn are extremely unlikely to have been made to precise standards (and definitely not to the exacting standards that we have here on TB)! Then add on copious amounts of textured paint, filler, the less-than-careful man-handling the props received, hurried assembly/dis-assembly and you pretty soon have very battered props whose dimensions are no longer 'true'.

Lespaceplie and I might differ in our interpretation of the various dimensions by a couple of millimeters here and there. At the end of the day this doesn't really matter because it's doubtful that the original Tardises were ever what my late grandmother would have called 'plumb' - I doubt that there was ever a really straight line in any of their parts in the first place!  ;)

T