I'll second that, it's looking great!

And third!

fourth!!!!

Fifth!!!!

Uh, sixth I guess? But I'm psyched to see it completed!

So I'm a bit ahead of myself now, but it's sometimes good to move on to something else for a bit and then come back to the usual grind .

My topsigns have finally been finished. I opted for one set of clear text with a black background, with frosted backing for when I want to light my box up internally along with the windows, for a look inspired by the New Series TARDISes. Another set is clear perspex with white text for when I'm not lighting up the box. I just like having the option of a different look when I may need/want it. They need a little tidying up, particularly along the long edge, as the perspex was difficult to cut smoothly. These will be covered by the frames but it's nice to put a bit of effort in.

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The final corner post has been rebuilt from scratch, to replace the twisted one. I'll have to set up what I have of the box again before I decide which ones need swapping where; obviously I want the best looking ones at the front, but this will have to wait - I have to get up early tomorrow morning as there is a Christmas coffee morning in the village hall, and guess where my TARDIS is parked! With any luck I''ll be able to dematerialise before then with no evidence that I was ever there... and then bring everything back in as soon as it's over to resume building!

Gosh look at those! How lovely!

So then, January begins.

I am extremely relieved to say that the third side is up! These things have been the bane of my existence for the last few weeks, if not just for the fact that it's the same thing, again. And again. And again. Just the doors to do now though, which should be a bit more manageable.



The inside of one side has an aluminium strip across to keep it more rigid. I plan to have these on the tops and bottoms of all the sides, but we only had one spare at the time.



I've made a start on the stepping to go beneath the sign boxes. I decided to make these from double layering 3mm ply to make up the thickness, purely because I had plenty left over from the side backings.



The box is currently light enough so it can be moved easily on the castors (but not so easily that it is in any danger of rolling away if someone steps in or out.) and the rear corner posts do not wobble at all which is a good sign! The front two do as there is nothing to brace them at the top. I plan for the sign box and of course the roof to do this job.





The window frames are just blue tacked in for these shots, to give a better impression of how they will look.

A quick look at what has been my workspace for some time! I have to say we are very lucky to have access to this space - we live directly opposite, so transferring the TARDIS, tools and materials is easy. I certainly would never have considered building a TARDIS if I didn't have access to here! However, it is being used on Saturday so tomorrow is clean up day! Joys.



Once I've done the doors I'll look into how I'm going to go about the centre dividers and also continue with the stepping and sign boxes!

Thanks for reading!

~Ben

This is a very nice build - I'm much enjoying watching it come together.

And it will certainly become more rigid still when it has a roof in place.

If the loose pin hinges prove too awkward on the walls, you could try the scenery hinges I found with easier-shaped pins. They're used in theatre and TV for quickly assembling and disassembling props: http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=7174.msg92078#msg92078

Funnily enough, I ordered some of those scenery hinges last night. The ones I have now are on the whole easy enough to get together, you just have to take your time getting the alignment right. It'll definitely be a lot easier quicker with the new ones once we've replaced them.

Bit of a micro update here, but I thought it was about time I posted what I'd been doing.

I spent quite a while thinking through what order I'm going to do things, and against my last update I decided to get on with centre dividers and stepping before doing the doors, the reason for this is I want to at least get started on the signboxes and the roof before I do the doors, as of course they won't be able to hang from the posts until there is something to brace them at the top.

So all the stepping has been done for the sides and the back. These I have done much as I said I would, by double layering some 3mm ply I had left over. This has worked pretty nicely, I think.





The centre dividers are on their way to being finished as well. I decided to keep the back the same as the sides in terms of dividers and stepping, as I am not including a rear set of doors I thought it would look a bit neater and more consistent this way.



I will be filling in the gaps at the top when I come to that later on once the whole box is more or less done. I'm pretty happy with the bevelled edge; I had to plane these down by hand and they turned out much neater, easier and quicker to do than I anticipated, which is always welcome!



I have also cut a few pieces for the bottoms of the windows. These should be around 22mm I believe, but I bought this as 25mm thick. I may keep it at this thickness, as I would rather have a nice straight edge then have to bother taking a couple of millimetres from each one and risk things going wibbly. As always I may change my mind later in the build, but at this point I'm happy as they are. (The window frames haven't been cleaned up since I cut them, so there's still some wibbly lines which I'll sort out soon.)



Seeing the box like this really gave me a little buzz!



One of my window frames is currently with a local glass company as they are trying to source some pebbled glass for the corners, so hopefully they'll be getting back to me soon with some good news

Thanks all for looking

Looks like great progress!

I found pebbled glass in architectural reclamation yards. They sometimes have racks of old doors and windows with the glass in them, so I bought a whole door and extracted the glass. Since you're only doing 16 very small panes, you don't actually need all that much of it.

I found clear acrylic beads of the right size at a craft shop, made "trays" out of tinfoil by pressing them into the window frames and placing them on a cookie sheet, and cooked them in an electric oven on...I forget...185?  I started as low as I could and moved up until I found the sweet spot.  While I don't know the science of it--or if it was even anything but my imagination--it seemed to me that it worked best to heat until the plastic just started to melt, let it cool, and then heat it a second time.  Then the whole thing got stuck to a pane of ordinary plastic using clear silicone caulk.

It's been a while, but I've been busy again with more dalek events, and those pesky side projects.

First on my list to do was replace the existing hinges with stage hinges. These make it infinitely easier to get it set up and taken down again, something which I have had to do a lot recently. (Currently, it has been up since Wednesday and has to come down Monday afternoon as the hall is booked, which I think makes this the longest it's been set up!)

The hinges were quite a bit wider than what would fit in the slots I had made for the previous hinges, so I cut each one in half, which took a bit of time but was definitely worth it.

Now on to something I actually remembered to take some pictures of!

I've been dying to get a few paint tests underway for some time now, and settled on two colours to use as the base - Oxford Blue and Venetian Crystal 1. The latter has a lovely greenish tint, which I absolutely love. I did a test on a small offcut of wood, and sanded the paint back in places to expose different layers and get different reflective qualities. I did a final pass with a small amount of watered down black over a rag and wiped over the block to blend the different shades and make the colour shifts a bit less obvious.



I'll have to do a test soon with the texture underneath as well.

Now on to today's excitement, I finally made a start on the sign boxes! I decided to make these out of plywood, as the thicknesses were easy to get. I was dreading how much the material was going to amount to, but was pleasantly surprised when they only asked for a fiver for everything I needed for all four sign boxes!

I started to assemble the pieces, felt pretty good about how it was going, glued everything down and then...



...oops. I realised that the end pieces were the wrong way - the wider plate should be in the middle between the two smaller ones. Luckily the glue was still drying so I was able to prize these off and swap them round to how they should be. Lesson learned!



Final test fit before the top gets secured on (sorry about my Dad's arms, he's just holding it in place for the photo).



To say I'm happy is an understatement! Ideally I'd like to have all the sign boxes done by the end of next week, but we'll see what the universe has planned for me...

Until next time!

You've been getting Dulux testers then Flumbledryer  Venetian Crystal 1 is a good colour for a TARDIS and im always looking at the Dulux colour cards we have at work when I'm at work mixing paint. I think Royal Regatta was what I used on my bedroom TARDIS doors, and dirtied them up

BioDoctor900