Mar 29, 2024, 01:35 pm

News:

New, New TardisBuilders!


4-H Fair Project Tardis

Started by merry, Jul 05, 2011, 10:32 pm

Previous topic - Next topic

merry

Jul 18, 2011, 05:30 am #15 Last Edit: Jul 18, 2011, 05:34 am by merry
On day 14 she attached the four sides to the corner posts, this time using 60 minute epoxy so she'd have plenty of working time.  An extra set of hands to help hold things in place helped until she could get the clamps on and tightened.  She tapped the corner posts down to make sure they were level and checked to make sure the top pieces were flush.

epoxy.jpg

She also took the glued up roof board to a friend who showed her how to use a planer and and jointer to even up the top and bottom and one of the sides.

merry

Jul 18, 2011, 06:05 am #16 Last Edit: Jul 18, 2011, 06:35 am by merry
Day 15 - Using a miter saw, she first cut the roof board down to fit inside the corner posts, resting on the sides.  

squarelid.jpg

Then she and her dad hauled it off to his work where he keeps his table saw, and when they brought it back it looked like this:

BabyTardis.jpg


Here's a close-up shot of that roof.  The first cuts were to put the ledge on and I hear that took a good long while to get that done properly.  Slicing the four roof angles went smoothly.  Daughter tells me the digital protractor on the table saw works really well.

No cutting was needed for the top where the lamp sits--the measurements were on target.


lid.jpg

She probably would have cut the base to size and beveled it, but the board doesn't sit flat.  It looks like planing it may take off too much so I'll be off looking for another tomorrow.

Forgot to mention that today I was at an antique flea market (you know the kind, where they charge you $15 for your grandma's biscuit cutter) and kept my eyes open for a lock that fit her trim better.  I did see one that would have been perfectly lovely but it was on a $175 old jewelry box and another on a very pricey machinist's tool box.  I wound up bringing an old brass padlock home, with hopes of taking it apart and pulling out the circular key part.  I was able to pull it out and it's a good fit, but we were puzzled over why they'd use such strong materials and craftsmanship on a lock that my daughter picked open with a hairpin in 30 seconds.

Onward, I suspect now is when her hard work begins...

Rassilons Rod

Lovely start to your build here, the roof looks really nicely done! :)
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.

merry

Day 16--Today we took care of a few tasks that are necessary to move forward:

1)  Mother-daughter shopping trip to Lowe's so she could pick out a replacement board for the base.

2)  Shopped around for wood for the sign and the gap behind it.  There was plenty in 1 and 2 inch widths, and nothing in between.  Finally lucked out and found trim 1/4 x 1-1/8 x 8 ft.  She glued up a section of that today so she'd have 1/2" thickness and hopefully tomorrow those will be cut to fit between the corner posts, behind where the sign will attach.

That same trim in 1/4 inch will be used for the sign.  It would be ideal if a groove could be cut into it so that the sign sits back a little instead of framing it with little trim, but I have no idea how to make that happen neatly.

Once the piece behind the sign is in, she can start working out the placement of the trim.  That needs to happen very soon in order to get the windows cut out and get glass cut.




DoctorWho8

Do you have the PDF for the signage?  The links are somewhere around here.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

merry

Quote from: DoctorWho8 on Jul 19, 2011, 09:55 pm
Do you have the PDF for the signage?  The links are somewhere around here.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff


Yes, thanks, Bill.  Just played around with that top sign a bit today.  Seriously graphics-challenged people (that would definitely be me) are wondering how to best go about resizing that.  Does the "fit to printable area" page printing option scale that down in correct proportions?

merry

Day 17-A very hot day for working in the garage!   

This morning she cut the pieces that will fill the gap behind the sign, plus cut the pieces that will likely wind up being the top signs.

Tonight she glued the gap pieces on.  It might be hard to tell from the picture, but she glued (no, make that 5-minute epoxied) those flush with the top of the sides and the signs will later be glued flush with the top of the corner posts.  She's skipping the narrower trim pieces that go to the sides, top, and between the two doors and this alignment added to the appearance of the top, plus it was really easy for her to line it all up.

To the left you should be able to see the gap piece glued in place, and the sign is clamped on to the right.
gap.jpg

In between cutting and epoxying, she thinks she's settled on a dollar store nail polish bottle as the lamp glass and did much moaning the fact of having to dump out perfectly good bright green glitter nail polish.  For now I think all she's planning on doing for lighting is use a small string of battery operated miniature lights.  She''ll work out a different lighting plan after the fair, when she has more time to play around to see what she likes.

Project check-in is two weeks from today.  Tomorrow the plan is to measure out and hopefully cut some trim for the doors and sides.  Hope to move it indoors where it's cool after that and get a coat of wood filler onto all four sides.

merry

Jul 21, 2011, 06:14 am #22 Last Edit: Jul 21, 2011, 11:55 am by merry
Forgot to mention, that late on Day 17 I went into the garage and found my oldest son cutting into wood, with a very small Tardis plan next to him.  Apparently he felt he was missing out on the fun.  Normally I would encourage this, but he's already behind on the guitar he's building plus he was using my expensive piece of aircraft grade plywood. The last I saw it today he'd glued up the sides.

Day 18--Today was trim cutting day.  I first worked through the measurements and numbers to adjust the pattern to her build, and then walked through it with her.  That was the first hurdle of the day.  Up til now she'd been doing all the cutting and construction with her dad and he speaks English whereas I speak Metric.  (Yes, we are a bilingual family ;))

She cut the vertical pieces first--slow going but she did a really good job of it.  Towards the end of those her dad stopped in and fixed up a jig with a stop block so she could cut multiples of the same length.  It also a Dalek arm to hold the wood when she was cutting the small horizontal pieces so she could keep her fingers well out of the way.  It was a lot slower going setting the horizontal pieces but it worked really well once I called and found out that "all set to go" really means that the plunger clamp was adjustable. mitersaw.jpg

It was a long, hot day spent in the garage but at the end of the day she had accomplished:
AllTrim.jpg

Once she started seeing the pieces come together, she started making adjustments.  The first was to move the signs down just a smidge and the second was to add in that center piece between the doors.  We had a piece of basswood that fit in there perfectly, so I ran back to the craft store for more.  

Also today, she took a scrap board that's similar to her sides and did a coat of wood filler.  She plans to sand and give that a coat of paint tomorrow to see what's coming in terms of finishing.

It's starting to look very Tardisy:

Trim.jpg

merry

Jul 22, 2011, 04:00 am #23 Last Edit: Jul 22, 2011, 04:33 am by merry
Day 18

Sigh...it was a terrible, no good Tardis building day.  Today the plan was to cut out the window slots and pretty much nothing went right.  She started out marking the slots for the windows and actually that went okay but it was all downhill after that.  She was to drill small holes in each corner using a forstner bit and then use a saber saw from there.

The drill was heavy and hard for her to use, and the wood splintered on the interior.  I told her it was nothing a little sanding and some wood filler wouldn't fix but it was upsetting seeing yesterday's nice layout turn into a messier, slightly damaged version today.  I wound up having to help work the drill along with her.  I also laid some boards inside with a big balsa wood block inside under the hole to be drilled to help feel when it was through plus to help ease the break-through.  It was a hot, not fun job but I pressed her to finish two holes in each window before quitting.

In the evening we set it up to cut and that didn't go well either.  The saw couldn't move freely over the surface due to the corner posts and top boards.  Setting in same height boards to rest the saw on didn't work because the blade wasn't long enough.  She cut the small section she could.  Will need to check around for longer blades tomorrow and try again.

windows.jpg

Lastly she sanded down her sample board to try out some textures.  Using 80 grade sandpaper going against the grain (since it's running wrong) she sanded one area fairly close to the wood, one with some texture left in and one without a lot of sanding at all so it looks pretty rough.  I know she won't choose the beat-up look--not sure what she'll go with though.

Due to the way the roof was cut, one angled side has a funky surface so she filled that.  We've used this version of Elmer's filler with model rockets for years so she's familiar with it.  I had her use it straight for the texturing experiment, but for the roof she watered it down to a runny toothpaste consistency, same as we always do. 

texture.jpg

DoctorWho8

I wasn't sure how the windows and inset would have been done, but the common approach is to cut them out before attaching corner posts.  This goes for models & full size builds.  But this is how you learn. ;)
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

merry

Jul 23, 2011, 05:18 am #25 Last Edit: Jul 23, 2011, 05:19 am by merry
Quote from: DoctorWho8 on Jul 23, 2011, 04:23 am
I wasn't sure how the windows and inset would have been done, but the common approach is to cut them out before attaching corner posts.  


Yeah, I asked about those window cuts before it was glued up.  If there's a next time on something like this, I'll ask a little more strongly.  ;)

I'm advising any and all future 4-H moms not to take the project guide handoff at window cutting time.  :D

She's through it--I'll update with the fix.

merry

Jul 23, 2011, 06:04 am #26 Last Edit: Jul 23, 2011, 01:09 pm by merry
Day 19

I am now officially a strong advocate of cutting out windows before putting in those corner posts ;), but in case anyone winds up in a similar jam, here's what I would have done differently.  

Before going back to the saber saw, she tried using a Rockwell Sonicrafter that her dad has.  It did cut very nice lines, but it was much harder for her to control and slower than the saber saw.  My older (also bigger and more experienced with power tools) son tried it out and was getting through wood with no problems. I thought I'd mention it as it did have the potential to get the job done.  Number one priority here was getting her through the project using tools that she could handle, so we went back to to the first option.

The saber saw has to have a flat surface to work properly and the few little boards we tired first didn't help much.  Today I cut boards to make a "stage" that was even with the corner posts for each cut window cut she needed to make.  All she needed was a narrow path that was wide enough to see her lines clearly and get the saw blade through.  

Also in hindsight, one complete trial window should have been done before having her do anything to the rest.  Those pilot holes she labored so much over yesterday turned out to be too small to get the longer, fatter saw blade through and given a few options today she used a Dremel tool and a small hobby saw to enlarge them.

Here's one of the 'stages"--this one for the bottom of the window cut.  I also cut a board (not shown) that went almost to the top so she could make those top of the window cuts.   The boards were clamped on so she didn't have to work on a sloppy surface.
Stage1.jpg

This isn't a good picture, but there are two small boards at the window end.  By moving those small boards around she was able to do all the side cuts.
Stage2.jpg

Once she was set up properly, the actual sawing went well.  She's done a lot of sewing and it was very much like running a sewing machine, only with a meaner needle.

It's been a very long, very hot two days, and when the wood plopped out of that last window, she ran inside singing "The Hallelujah Chorus".
WindowCut.jpg

If she didn't have a deadline coming up soon, this would be a very good place for a few days off.  Tomorrow she'll clean up those cuts and move onward.

chinandler

I like the progress your making., keep it up! Your making me want to make a model Tardis now!

merry

Jul 27, 2011, 06:34 am #28 Last Edit: Jul 30, 2011, 03:33 pm by merry
Moving along here, a little each day.  She's getting stressed now as there isn't a lot of time left and she's been having to work on other projects as well.

Day 21- The Tardis base was cut.  Some trouble there as something started acting up on the table saw the day before, but it's done.  

Day 22 -
Here her dad is instructing her on how to find the center of the base and predrill holes to later attach the base.  He also thought this should be the time to add any holes for electrical but she hasn't decided what to do with that yet, so it will need to happen before the second coat of paint.
CenteringBase.jpg

More sanding to square out the windows as much as possible, plus a second coat of paint on the interior.  Since the grain is going sideways on that board a regular paintbrush handle wouldn't fit inside and I had to slice off half the handle of one of my nice new small brushes.  That was a sad day...

She wanted to give a shot at cutting the windows and practiced on glass from a discarded window frame.  She did quite well actually and if she'd been using similar glass probably could have got the job done. However, when she tried it out with her supernova glass and it was much tougher as it's a much thicker glass with a pattern.  She got one window cut but it wasn't clean and she cracked off a piece she didn't intend and made the decision that someone with experience should handle it instead.  I'm glad she tried, and glad she handed it off when she did.

Day 23 - Bright and early Monday morning we took the glass and box down to a glass shop here in town.  She explained what she needed done and it was do-able of course, but I could tell the fast turn around wasn't ideal on their end.  The lady at the desk asked when the absolute last point she could get it back and still make it and we said Thursday.  That would have really pushed her but it also cleared the way for her to work on her other projects.  

When the lady who took the order explained to the glass cutter what she was trying to build he said "Oh, she must be a Doctor Who fan."  

We got a call at 3pm that day telling us it was ready.   8)  The windows all had to be fit individually since she couldn't get them exact.  We were told he was a woodworker/carpenter type and it was such a help to her in this first project to have it back so quickly.

Also noteworthy was that the glass she was given turned out to be quite a gift.  This glass business has been around a long time and they told us it's very hard to come by and that they never see it.  I'd show you a picture of it but it's tucked away in a cabinet and it's going to stay there until installation time.

(That little nick off the upper right is from where I dropped it.  ::))

glasscut.jpg

merry

Day 24, Tuesday, one week from project check in.

Today the exterior got a coat of wood filler.  I had her go a little thick on that as I figured it would be better at this point to spend a little extra time sanding than to lose a day for another round of wood filling.  Hopefully this will help even out all the various woods used, as well as some of the wonky grain things that are happening.

Also the roof and base got their first coat of blue paint.  I thought she'd be really excited but it was a bit of a jolt for her to see it, as what you have in mind rarely is what you see after a first coat of paint when the project is in pieces.   She's never done a paint job like this before, so it's another new skill to learn.

topbottom.jpg