Quote from: galacticprobe on May 27, 2018, 04:10 am
another transformable TARDIS build?

This is where the fun begins...

Are you going to replicate that side window damage?

If you mean the broken lower rightmost pane on the left wall, quite possibly.
But definitely the broken and badly-repaired right hand door window frame.
They replaced the central divider on the front with a flatter one at the same time I think (between seasons 16 and 17), so that's going to have to be switchable.
As previously I'll probably focus initially on the quirks that were there for the longest time.

If you look at the s17 references I posted some time ago (Nightmare of Eden??) it becomes clear how that got broken...

Lalla is using that window frame to close the door...    

No idea how the window glass got broken though. Probably a clumsy or tired stage hand....

She probably didn't help by doing that. It was fine in Armageddon Factor, and broken in Destiny of the Daleks. I'm sure the full story will be forth-coming from Tony in due course.

I can't check right now, but I'm guessing that as the production order goes like this:

5G	Creature from the Pit
5H	City of Death
5J	Destiny of the Daleks
5K	Nightmare of Eden
5L	Horns of Nimon
5M	Shada

I would guess that it happened between City and Destiny. I didn't remember that it was kaput in Destiny, but I'll take your word for it.

I can't honestly recall if it was broken in either Creature or City.... But as you say, Tony will definitely have the answers

I think it was broken in Creature from the Pit.

The closing door in Destiny of the Daleks is woefully warped too. You can see where it doesn't meet the the fixed door at the bottom. This box was in a sorry state by then. Also where the Tardis lands in the "cave" entrance it lacks its light on the roof. Not enough space to accommodate it, it would seem.

Bx

Quote from: Scarfwearer on May 27, 2018, 05:30 pm
I think it was broken in Creature from the Pit.

So, possibly damaged by mishandling between seasons. Repaired for Nightmare and abused again by Lalla

Are you going to replicate the TYJ style doors that were fitted for Castrovalva? You could put them on the rear of the box in place of a clack curtain and spin it round as required (depending on how moveable the box is)

Quote from: Teppic on May 27, 2018, 07:38 pm
Are you going to replicate the TYJ style doors that were fitted for Castrovalva? You could put them on the rear of the box in place of a clack curtain and spin it round as required (depending on how moveable the box is)

Like this?


Yes, they will normally hang on the back, but there's no need to turn the box around - they're on lift-off hinges so it's quicker to just swap the doors...


They open the other way, and have the flat divider.


The geometry is quite a bit different.
Interestingly, if you take a 78.5" tall panel, lay five 1x4s on it spaced evenly and bevel the edges, you get a Newbery style door. If you use 1.25x4.5 timber instead (which is readily available, and actually 27mm x 108mm) with a steeper bevel you get a TYJ style door. It does seem like the designs may have been influenced by the materials.




"But wait", I hear you say, "In Logopolis, the original Newbery doors were modified to have the lock on the left like the TYJ. Are you going to make another set of doors to replicate that? And if so, where are you going to hang those?"

I have a cunning plan...

Will the second set of doors form the rear of the box as with your transformable Brachaki build?

Well indeed so: the Newbery style doors go on the front, the TYJ style doors go on the back. Or they get swapped.
The cunning plan concerns what to do about the fact that they moved the lock on the Newbery doors in Logopolis.
That's up next...

In the last bank holiday episode we saw two sets of doors, with a need for the Newbery doors to have a lock that changes sides. (Well I suppose I could just skip it and pretend it never happened in Logopolis...)

I don't want to build another whole set of doors to deal with the lock moving. Apart from anything else: where would I put them?



It occurs to me that it's really just the divider and the two vertical stiles that touch it that change. The rest of the doors stayed the same...


So this happened.


I just removed the screws and repositioned some that were screwed into the window frame and phone panel to hold them in place.


With that done, I drilled 6mm holes in symmetrical places through the whole structure, recessed them enough that I can hide the bolt head with wood filler and make the retaining nut flush with the surface.


This is very like the method I used to attach the door dividers on my last build, but in this case it attaches the whole stile.


After the filler dries and is sanded (which happened quickly in the sunshine today you can hardly see where the bolts are.

So there's only one extra stile needed: the blank stile from the left is flipped over and becomes the blank stile on the right. The third stile will be stored inside the Tardis.


While I was at it, I decided to replicate that bad window repair, as it was there for the whole of Season 17 and Logopolis.


I used the good one as a template for the frame, and glued and pinned some sticks together in the peculiar way they did the bad repair. I don't imagine whoever did that would expect that forty years later someone would be lovingly recreating that one!


Here's how it looks with the 'repaired' window.


And here it is with the doors in the left-opening-first configuration.

There'll probably be an update about the dividers - as I've glossed over some stuff there...

Life has been busy the last couple of weeks, so I haven't managed to progress with the building, but I did get a couple of texture tests done. Still not satisfied, but I thought I'd show you where I've got to with it.

When I did my first build in the states, I used a spray texture made by Homax. It's normally used to repair damaged textured walls, as it matches the 'orange peel' texture that the dry-wallers squirt from their powered sprayers.
That was about 10-15 years ago, but they still sell it, albeit in a different can.

It produced this result on my first Tardis when I did the refit:


The trouble is that while this costs about $14 in the states at the moment, to get it in the UK costs about £75 - (that's about $100!). That's per can. I think in the US I needed more than 6 cans, and current reviewers on amazon confirm my experience that it doesn't go anywhere near as far as the coverage stated in the description.

Not happening.


Here's a good photo of the actual Newbery prop showing the texture effect that I'm after:


Rustoleum in the UK produce a texturing paint, called "stone effect" or "pebble" depending on the colour:


I bought a can to try it, even though the texture on the lid didn't look much like what I was after.

It's really a sandstone effect - matching what's on the lid. So not what I'm looking for.


Time for some experiments.


I poured some PVA glue into some porridge oats...


And mixed that with some left-over paint from my previous build.

I rollered it onto some scrap wood to produce this:


(actually I think this pic is without the PVA glue step, but it doesn't seem to look any different)

Here it is indoors:


And here it is outdoors in direct sun:


I did several tests and I've lost track of which picture is from which test. Some were rollered, some went on with a brush.

The general result is that they all have too much relief (height). The rollered ones look better, and more layers of paint look better.

I'm also wondering how well the encased porridge will survive over the long term.


I'm thinking at this point that I'm going to try a further test with my plaster/PVA mix, some uneven application and a rough roller.

But it's probably not going to happen this week.