Jam Jar Lurker's Golden TARDIS

[Jam Jar Lurker]

[Jam Jar Lurker]

The TARDIS, the Moon and Venus.

[Jam Jar Lurker]

These were taken within a few seconds of each other, but Amanda's phone has a night time setting.

[Jam Jar Lurker]

[Volpone]

Ooh...the backdrop looks amazing, lit up at night.  At least it does in a photo.  Obviously I don't know if the effect is as impressive in person, but one would assume. 

Even with my solar signal lamp, I was doing some experiments (when I had more time).  If you look at solar lamps, they'll often have a mirrored reflector at the bottom to help increase the light.  Mine didn't really have that, so I was trying to come up with something shaped like a lightbulb to catch and diffuse the light.  There's a hack of making a lantern by shining a cell phone (or a flashlight, one would assume) up into a bottle of water.  The problem being that water is going to freeze in winter (I actually confirmed this in my relatively mild climate).  Never got around to buying rubbing alcohol and it didn't occur to me to use gin or vodka until I'd kind of given up on my experiments.  And as it happened, a plain old burnt out frosted glass lightbulb worked pretty well. 

I also looked for one of those plastic magnifier sheets (which actually use the Fresnel principle) to line the inside of my glass lantern chimney, since it isn't an actual Fresnel lens, but I couldn't just buy one locally and wasn't in the mood to send for one. 

I mention all this because looking at your pics, if there is a way to take the top off your lantern so the light shines up as well or you could add a second light that points up into the lantern and then had some kind of light diffuser and/or lens to the lantern interior, you could light up your light without a need to run AC power to it. 

[russellsuthern]

I agree with Volpone,
That backdrop looks awesome!!   


Russ

[Jam Jar Lurker]

Thanks Volpone. Some good ideas to experiment with. I'll let you know how it goes.

Yes indeed Volpone and Russ, the backdrop is very effective (which I can't take any credit for). We were in the garden most of the day today. I left the door open and every now and again it would catch my eye by surprise and I'd smile. Still got a notion for something a little moodier and with a higher eyeline, but very pleased to have it.

Francis

[Jam Jar Lurker]

One of the smaller jobs along the way; spraying the phone panel with automotive lacquer to protect the raised lettering. To be honest, I chose this can based on Amazon reviews and that it wouldn't take weeks to arrive through the lockdown. Time will tell...
And as soon as I press send, I'll start Episode Three of the Daemons. I'm on my first ever watchthrough and it's taken me 16 months to reach here. But I have a bowl of cream of chicken soup, so here we go...

[scotland yard]

Well, I hope it works well, because remember, the Dæmons destroy their failures. Enjoy!

[Jam Jar Lurker]

Dear Scotland Yard,

How did you get your "a" and "e" in

Dæmons

to join?

[Rassilons Rod]

Its a special letter, it exists in Norwegian,  for example (and probably snuck into old English via the Vikings... think  Æthelred  and so on)...

If you're on your phone,  hold down the a on your keyboard and you'll get a bunch of variants on the letter "a"... å, æ, ă, ă, ą, à, á, â, ã, ä....

If you're on a computer,  search Google for: ae character

You can just copy paste from the results  

Dear Scotland Yard,

How did you get your "a" and "e" in

Dæmons

to join?

[Jam Jar Lurker]

Dæmons...

You learn something everyday on TARDIS Builders!

[scotland yard]

Its a special letter, it exists in Norwegian,  for example (and probably snuck into old English via the Vikings... think  Æthelred  and so on)...

If you're on your phone,  hold down the a on your keyboard and you'll get a bunch of variants on the letter "a"... å, æ, ă, ă, ą, à, á, â, ã, ä....

If you're on a computer,  search Google for: ae character

You can just copy paste from the results  

Dear Scotland Yard,

How did you get your "a" and "e" in

Dæmons

to join?

You've beaten me to it!

It's quite simple from a phone or tablet, as you said. But if you're on a computer, there's this program called "character map" installed with Windows. I think it has a counterpart in Apple, but I'm not sure... anyway, it supposedly has all characters and symbols of unicode, so naturally sometimes it gets tricky to find stuff there, and then Google's your friend there. But character map is a handy tool to have anyway.

[Jam Jar Lurker]

There's a gap between my doors mostly, but not entirely, hidden by the central divider. You can see light escaping from the top of the divider in the picture above.

My solution was to add some self adhesive waterproof insulation foam tape to the inside of the right door; I've borrowed this picture from Amazon to show the dimensions. There was something very satisfying in applying it that made me want to cover the entire world.

There is also a gap where the doors meet the floor, so I added some there too.

Freshly painted TARDIS floors do not stay clean for long!

[Jam Jar Lurker]

Despite the TARDIS like properties of a Police Box replica, a gap at the bottom of the door on the inside is not any smaller on the outside.

Although loving the black foam insulation tape, I felt it was rather too chunky and noticeable for the outside. So I started by applying some of the narrower, rounded white foam I had used to form the interior window frames. And initially it worked very well, especially when painted.

However, the space was larger on the main, right hand door. The foam was too narrow and either missed the gap entirely, or got pulled under the door whenever it opened. So, like a Dæmon, I destroyed my failure and stated again. I went back to the black. It is a bit chunky, and does take away a little from the definition of the central divider at the bottom, but I don't mind it as much as I'd expected. And it doesn't have to be permanent.

The Superdec does a nice job of binding and blending the two textures. It puts me in mind of some of those curious modifications we would see in the old Annual illustrations.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I've reached Day of the Daleks. I do prefer the Special Edition DVD, but I feel as this is a watchthrough I should watch the original.