I'm somewhat playing catch-up with these updates now, and again I must apologise for potential wonky photos, I'm still not able to get acess to my usual computer.

So I finished up the demat lever, sans the installation of electronics as of yet, and here's the result:







First of all the biggest thank you to Dino for supplying the graphics on the sides and top - they look fantastic and double the calibre of the whole unit! I was going to use inkjet transfers as per Kiwidoc's suggestion but eventually I just pasted them on with PVA, frankly you can't really tell they're not transfers after weathering.
Likewise a big thank you to KiwiDoc as I borrowed your gauge graphic - looks great! I'm extremely pleased with this as it looks damn realistic - I built it up in layers using foam, acrylic and several print outs of the graphic with cut outs to make it appear 3D. With some weathering it looks nearly bang on! Thanks Glen! I just need to add faux bolt heads...
And finally of course I weathered the whole thing, a bit more extreme than the original and I added some black weathering too as leaving just the brown like the prop didn't seem to look right in real life, still too clean. So it is what it is and I'm quite happy to have this unit completed

Those graphics look great, well done - what a re team you and Dino make!    So how did you apply them in the end - are they printed on transparent film and just stuck down?     Fantastic final look though, and the dirty weathering is great - can it be too grungy?

Haha thanks KiwiDoc! Dino should be proud certainly, don't tell him, he might get a big head, but since removing it from my Police Box I've actually put the SJA sign he developed in a frame on my wall
But so should you, so far of the people that have seen this prop it's been the gauge on the front that have caught their eye. The postman asked what the gauge was reading, and in a moment of hilarity which she'll never live down my girlfriend sat with it fiddling with the lever trying to get the dial to move, before proclaiming the "clock think is broken". My response was "you realise it's a piece of paper, right?"

Yeah in the end I just printed the graphics out onto a standard white A4 sheet, pasted PVA onto the back of them, placed them on then brushed more PVA over the top. Certainly does the job nicely!

Thanks

Just a quick note here because I'm back home and pondering the console.

I've started painting the ribs, after much deliberation about the colour I eventually found one I liked. As KiwiDoc said, when you really look the base colour is much closer to flesh-tone than you realise.
The base colour I chose is about the same shade as the in construction pictures of the console, flesh-tone but with a golden/orange tint. My plan was to wash this with deep brown and then a little black paint to get relatively close to the state or disrepair it was in late in Tennant's run.
Issue is it's worked too well, the paints have mixed a little and my test rib now looks nearly a dead ringer for the ribs on the console at the Experience today. That'd be great, except today the console ribs have no definable colour! They've been repainted, glued, covered in soot, reweathered rebuilt/repaired so much that they're now more of a dark brown/murky grey than the old golden coral they looked on screen.
I think I'll need to rethink my painting plans, but it's a blow as these paints are f***ing expensive!!!!

Wow! That lever housing looks, well, FANTASTIC! Those graphics came out better than I'd imagined! (See what you have to look forward to, Glen? ) I can't wait to see it with the electronics installed. (If you've got a decent drawing or template for the housing with measurements, would you please e-mail me a copy? I'll have to scale it down to fit my Identity Crisis console, but maybe if I can get this part started I can get the rest of my console build off the ground. The Evil One promised to help with that, and she graduates this Friday - 8th May - with her Master's in Education and will be living at home again, so with luck... Fingers crossed!)

Oh, and by the way...

Quote from: superrichi1a on May 01, 2015, 09:44 pm
Dino should be proud certainly, don't tell him, he might get a big head, but since removing it from my Police Box I've actually put the SJA sign he developed in a frame on my wall

I heard that!

It's people like you that make this Forum a fun place to be! (There are many others - too numerous to list here - but you all know who you are!)

Dino.

So I'm still playing catch-up a little here, please forgive me if any analogous photos appear in the, things that are finished that I haven't reported yet etc, between maintaining a life and actually building I don't always have time to write up what I've done.
Firstly just a quick pic from a few weeks ago, car boot sale knick-knacks haul, including a very close car radio face, some computer fans, a bicycle pump (I always thought there was one on the console, can't seem to find it now but seeing as I always had a very clear idea about where I thought it was and what it was used for I may add it in anyway), speakers, old keyboard (place holder until I can get a proper mix board), and what isn't seen are the rheostat and the metal "hubs" - so I'm starting to gather together controls now!



Next on the list is the rim. I've finished sanding, filling and generally finishing off these pieces, and then I applied a matt black undercoat to them all. Finally I had just enough Crackle Paint left to paint one section, so here's how it looks:



I dusted over a little too much of the gold I think, so the next one will be more of a dirty cream, but I'm happy with the result. There aren't a lot of cracks in this one and this stuff has a ridiculous failure rate and it's been a while so I've gotten unused to it. Next time to get better cracks I'll spray over a still tacky black coat, make the cream coat thicker and ensure it's in the shade so doesn't dry too fast.

Once all that was done, I moved onto the cracked ice panels. There are 3 of these on the console, and if you've ever seen photos of them "clean" you'll know how beautiful but also how complicated they look. They're about 2 inches thick of what I assume is crystal clear cast resin, with plugs for any controls to sit on top and criss-crossing "cracked ice" lines all over them. Sadly nowadays they are a dirty grey colour and caked in dust. Museumdave I know eventually used silicon on his panels to achieve a similar effect, whilst Kiwidoc's initial idea of casting fibreglass onto cling-film I thought was genius! I wanted something a little cheaper, quicker, more durable and would still allow me to shine various coloured lights through, so I've used 3mm acrylic. I measured it on the console and cut it to shape:



Then, to build up the cracked ice look I took some white paint and some scrunched up kitchen towel and started dabbing the paint all over, the scrunches in the kitchen towel leaving gaps for the light to get through but also sharp cuts like cracked ice. Finally I gave a random dusting with silver spray paint and here's the result:

 

Relatively quick, cheap and easy and I really think it gives a nice result, I hope you agree!

Thanks for reading!

Richard, these might help you out with the bicycle pump locations (and yes, you're right; there are some on the console).


Here are a couple of pumps, both on the rib with the Blue Bell Tobacco bell on it. (The bell is highlighted in the dotted white circle, and is the reference point for the pumps. Note what I think is the mallet hanging on the pump highlighted by the yellow arrow.)


Another view (from the "far side", which we rarely got to see much of). Again the Bell in the dotted circle is the reference point. This image was obviously taken at a different time because in this one, nothing is hanging on the "yellow arrowed" pump. But you can see it's location in relation to the rib with the Demat Lever on it.


The Demat Lever rib with a pumps on it! (And again the Bell is the reference point in the dotted white circle.) Notice the pump highlighted by the green arrow. This one has a "T" handle on it, and actually looks like an old (small) bilge pump. (There was also one like this on the 2010 console.) The yellow arrow is highlighting the same pump as before. (I kept things highlighted in the same colors, so every yellow arrow is pointing to the same pump; the white dotted circle is always the Bell, etc.)

Anyway, I hope this helps you, and Glen, and BioDoc, with the pumps' locations: three total. I didn't see any others around the console (unless you count that fire extinguisher, whose make and model escapes me at the moment; then it would be four pumps). I'll see of I can find an image with that one, but unless I'm wrong, it's mounted under the rib with the rheostat on it.

AH-HA! I found it; the fire extinguisher is on the underside of the Rheostat rib! Highlighted by the pinkish arrow:





So I guess you could possibly count that as one of the pumps, and if so that would make, four pumps on this console!

Oh, and by the way, you also definitely get an for this one!

Dino.

Thanks Dino! Wow that's a very comprehensive list, thank you! Saved me probably hours of digging around the forum there
I never knew there were so many pumps! I always thought there was one and that the thing The Doctor, well, pumped, was, well, I dunnno but something else! Certainly an education there, and I never knew there was one on a lower rib at all, so I've had an education here
Looks like my phantom pump it still at large though, I was always under the impression there was a black foot pump on the end of a rib and that would be pumped or kicked appropriately, I don't know where I got that idea from, but I always assumed it was an air brake of some sort. Looks like that's something I've come up with myself and doesn't actually exist, I wonder if I'll include it...
But thank you!

Hi guys, there is also another pump on the rib with the Mercedes hand brake (to the right of the back metal panel), and there has often been another just laying across that same metal panel as if discarded.   Too many pumps!    Dino listed the main ones seen on screen though

Thanks Glen! Dammit this console is a nightmare to get a handle on! I keep wondering if life would have been easier if I'd just gone for the Pertwee era console as I first planned but then I remember why I loved the 2005 model in the first place, and why it's still my favourite. And besides, every build is a maze of it's own kind and everything else looks easy whilst you're trying to wrap your head around it

The weather out there I think has turned again, it pelted rain last night and it's too windy to build today. I've ran out of materials anyway and have some work coming up this week so any momentum I've built up may dissipate annoyingly. But this entry should bring this diary roughly up to date.

So I finished texturing the ribs last week and started looking seriously into paints. I've been carrying around Kiwidoc's mention in his diary that the ribs are more flesh-tone in colour than you realise and I was surprised when I started looking into it that he's correct, I always thought they were an orangey-brown. Whilst they become closer to that later on and with weathering, the base colour is very much more pale than you expect, almost yellow. By contrast on screen, and under the orange lights of the console room, they do indeed take on a more brownish tint. If you've ever seen the original at The Experience you may have noticed that in fact now they don't really have a colour at all. They're almost entirely covered in soot, dust, burn marks, purple and blue bruised weathering, brown weathering and probably a hefty amount of repair paint, up top not a lot of the original colour is left. For the ribs on this console I wanted to aim for a similar look to how it appeared on screen with it's more brown hue, and I decided to ease off the weathering somewhat, not just a personal choice but also because there's a very real difference as to how the console looks, and how it was intended to look on screen. I do not believe the degree of weathering present currently was ever mean't to be on show, it really doesn't look like coral any more, and I think that was what Moffat was referring to when he complained this console had to be scrapped because it didn't look very good in full HD.

I started with the bare flesh-tone paint. I used a colour by Valspar called "Party Favour" and I think it's a fair match for the console's bare colour on screen.



I then mixed blue and brown paint at a ratio of about 1:2 and watered it down slightly, this gave the murky bruised colour of the weathering on the original. I painted this on where I thought it was needed and ran some kitchen towel over it to give it that patchy look.



Finally I took some brown paint and mixed it with water at a ratio of about 1:1. I painted this on carefully, layering it up more over the blue weathering and making sure it was worked into all the creases of the coral before rubbing the top layers away with a kitchen towel - here's how it turned out:

 

Personally, I'm happy with this finish and I've painted half of the ribs like this so far.

 

And next to the rim section I think they look about right in relation, too, though I went a bit heavy with the yellow on that particular rim section.

I hope you like the look and thanks for reading!

Wow! It's amazing how the color of those ribs changes even in the lighting you're working with! In the overcast photos of the finished rib (the close-up), and in the sun in front of your TARDIS - completely different colors to the eye! And both look really close to how I think the console started out in 2005 (when she was "new").

This one is definitely getting the boosted Factor as well!

(Oh, and since you mentioned what a nightmare she is, if you ever decide to go with that Pertwee console I think you know where you can find a good home for the pieces of this one... I really don't need that sofa, taking up all that room where a console could fit. )

Dino.

Great work, looking good!   I'll have to try watering down the paint for doing highlights, that seems really effective, thanks for the tip!

I don't think you went heavy with the yellow on that rim at all, it looks great.

Thanks guys! I must say trying to get a colour was a real pain in the arse. The more I looked at the pictures, the more I realised the console really often appeared to have yellow coral rather than orange-brown. In actual fact I nearly repainted them all because I just couldn't get it looking right, the original ribs seemed ever more pale and yellowed, and the replicas seemed ever more too vibrant, MD's got quite close though with less bruising, and KiwiDoc you've nearly hit the nail on the head with the base colour!
I looked at a load of pictures though from the console throughout its run and decided that my original perception of the ribs being a orange-brown, though innacurate technically, was the only thing that was ever going to look right to my eyes right in front of me, and I think that's because the combination effect of how the console gets lit on screen and how it accumulated weathering over its run. A good example of how what you see and how a prop actually is can differ!

Hehe thanks Dino! I suppose they do, yes! Maybe it's so different because of the way the weathering shows up in different light levels I'm actually fondest of that first rib I painted, the one with the close up. I messed up the weathering and created a purple murky smudge right across it, but it turns out it looks exactly how the coral is supposed to "bruise" as it's forced to grow into a console shape, I couldn't recreate that perfects second time around!

I'd certainly recommend it Glen With the texture of the coral it's the perfect opportunity to make it appear dirty I'm the recessed areas with minimal effort.

Thank you, 14th! I'm a bit partial to it myself, I must admit. Damn difficult to match the original weathering perfectly though, so I'm sure there'll be variation between each rim.
I'm even considering going off-book a bit for the others. This crackle paint is really expensive and it had a stupidly high failure rate. Not quite the right look for the era I'm aiming for, but I may follow Biodoc's lead in creating larger porcelain cracks with a pen and then clear coat it for a gloss sealed look. Far cheaper and it may just look better. This crackle paint is the sort of thing that looks great on screen but in real life is more of a challenge.

Just a quick phone picture, travelling at the mo and will do a proper update and upload better pictures later. Sorry if they're rotated! As I say, posting from a phone here