Mobius's Baroque Victorian French steampunk art-nouveau closet Tardis build

[mobius]

captain's log, stardate, uhh... 03302014

Sunday, rehearsed with my band at 10am, skipped my rocky horror cast meeting (a rehearsal, I do lights only so I don't really have to be there anyway) in favour of spending the afternoon working on my Type 40!

and made some important progress as you shall presently observe:

in our last episode, I had decided to just go ahead and make a phone chamber door with a frame 1.5" wide all around, and see how that looked, so I drew guidelines and fired up the router, decided to route a channel for the glass to sit in before cutting out the centre so the router shoe would have some place to sit in the middle and be balanced. a good choice.

test cut


full "moat" -chiselled the corners.


cut out the centre, hmm, looks like a winter forest scene in a frame. white spray paint and scratches, I might be onto something...


test fitting, had to belt sand it a little.


hinges and latch installed. it occurred to me shortly before making it, I could have flipped the latch, so the smaller bit, the strike plate, was on the frame, and the knob was on the actual door frame, facilitating a thinner frame for the PTO sign, but then I would have needed a pull handle on the frame as well, and I think you should be able to open the phone door with one hand, or tentacle.


this is out of chronological order so I have a nicer thumbnail for my thread, lol. but it's ok, it's time travel after all. I decided to stain the frame rather than paint it blue, I can still paint it blue, will do a mock up in photoshop shortly to see how that looks, but staining it after painting it would be trickier.


corners fitted on, 2 tiny brads hold them on from the sides so I'm not nailing them in til it's finished.


I also cut a piece of 1/4" thick lucite I had for the panel, then another the correct size ( d: ) and a piece of 1/8" thick plexiglass to go behind the paper and hold it in place. a few screw mounted storm window thingies will hold both pieces of glass in place, and light can shine through it. I was going to put some lights inside the chamber, but since the back opens up, I don't actually have to do that, I can just open the back and let the interior light come through, so for the time being I will put off installing dedicated lights inside the phone chamber. might do some later, but it's not vital and I really want to get this thing installed! @_@ I have other things to do, but I gotta finish this first. if only I didn't need to sleep, or worry about annoying the neighbours with my table saw late at night.

oh yes, thanks for the links, Dino, and suggestion Mark, I had thought about using the font from the St John's sign possibly, the visible part of the sign will be 6.75" by 10.25" (shy), now that I know that I can start working it up. the font I used on that mock up (which is not quite as to scale as I thought, but close enough, wasn't Times, but a similar one, might actually be 2 different fonts in there, doesn't matter though, that was just a quick layout to see how I felt about a fat blue frame.

I will check out the sign resources on this site for sure, had been planning on it.

tomorrow I will probably have to work, can't avoid it forever, but should be able to get a little something done, even if it's just spraying more finish on something, or sanding a bit. oh, it rained and I discovered when it rains, the floor gets wet, right where I set her up. delightful. d: so now the bare bottoms of my 2x4 feet are sitting in a cold shallow puddle of rain. at least they won't warp, being screwed to the walls already. bit of a bother though.

[mobius]

last few times I tried to post an update the site froze on me. this has been happening more frequently and is quite frustrating. are we overloading the server? who hosts this site? I find that when I look at the site on my phone it is far less likely to fail to load.

oh and now with my last 2 updates, because I had to make several attempts, and page reloads, I see multiple copies of thumbnails at the top of the page, though thankfully the actual update post only posted once. is there anyway to clean that up?

just notice the pull knob looks like an old fashioned telephone on its side! bonus!

[DoctorWho8]

The thumbnails at the top of each build page thread is normal.  They are the previews for all the pictures you post in your build.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

[mobius]

thanks, I understand that, but I'm seeing 3 copies of each. seems a bit of a glitch.

[mobius]

captain's log, stardate, uhh... 03 31 2014

10pm last night I put another coat of clear acrylic on the gold window frames. read the can of stain I used on the phone door frame, wait 8-10 hours it says. ah well.
did the tape test again, still picking up some gold on it, I'm beginning to feel I oughtn't endorse that acrylic product. did another coat, this time shook the can for the full 2 minutes as instructed. it is a bit cold in the cellar, and I held the can closer than directed to, they suggest several thin coats. I think I must have 3 thick coats on there by now. just going to call this the last one and be damned. next thing I spray on the blasted things is copper. after painstakingly masking off the tops and bottoms.

working on a sign in photoshop. it's skinnier than standard, relative to its height, so I can't get the spacing exactly the same, ce la vie.  once I had the frame/door on the phone chamber I thought how cool it was to see through it, what if I paint the text on the glass, maybe gold or white with a black border, so you can see the phone inside? cool idea. be quite a bit of work though. :/ maybe I can get it printed like that on acetate, or as a decal, by a local sign shop or printer. I would on the other hand like it to look a little aged as well. *tugs beard*

scrolling through fonts in photoshop, found one I kind of like, close to the old fashioned look I seek, but I had a thought, could make a hollow font, print it on acetate and fill the empty bits in, painted white, or silver or gold, from behind. that's a possibility. fast and cheap too. compared to hand painting the calligraphy, backwards, or hiring a shop. I like to do as much in-house as possible just on principle.

if I keep the glass clear, I'd have to put a light source in the box though. hmm.  maybe I should save that idea for later. be good to leave something to do once it's technically complete and installed. upgrades wot.

put a 2nd coat of stain on the phone chamber, I think this photo is from just the first coat though, followed by 2 times new roman sign mock ups of the actual ratios. I won't be using this font, I am going to install a few new fonts I got today and try them out later. got a lot of cleaning and organising done today, relevant as it's part of the build technically, have to have a clear landing zone for her to materialise in after all.

will be ready to install the window frames and cut the glass soon, but I am going to wait as long as possible as it's useful to have the window holes empty, makes moving it around easier.

[Mark]

Interestingly thats how the signs were at one point on the real police boxes, lettering on a see through glass panel.

Be interesting to see how easy it is to read.

[mobius]

thanks! what an awesome thing to find out! I think I'll start with a paper sign, just to get the project moving along, but changing the sign later will be very easy as there will be some window clips holding the glass in from behind, easy to switch out.

[mobius]

captain's log, stardate, uhh... 04 02 2014

last night I had put a 2nd coat of satin wipe-on poly on the PTO door frame, this morning, put on a coat of quick dry (2-3 hours is quick?) semi-gloss poly. did the tape test again with the gold frames, much better result, taped off the frames and sprayed the centres with copper, shortly thereafter peeled back some tape and it looked good, no bleed.(a few spots had some, but its good enough)

also realised tho I had several coats of clear acrylic on the St John's frame, there were what we in the tattoo field call "holidays", bald spots where it needed more pigment so I just resprayed the whole thing with a generous coat of copper as well. will cover that with clear poly when it's dry as it seemed to come off on one's skin a little,  if it seems like it still does that after this coat. tiny glittery bits. shouldn't really, but there we are. the puddle on my cellar floor, was really more of a damp spot, if it rains again I'll put down a towel to catch it before it can pool in the centre under my call box. still plenty to do, but it's mostly woodwork and paint, most of the bothersome fiddly finishing bits are nearly wrapped up. getting excited again.

after work put another coat of poly on the door, and one on the hexagonal octagon. woo.

oh and did a little test fitting with a window. hard to see in the photo the 2 tones of gold and copper on the frames, less subtle in person, but still subtle, which is nice.
 I guess I have to start thinking about what I want to use for the window glass. I think I am leaning towards one pane per window of clear lexan, I have plenty, and self adhesive stuff from home depot to smoke the windows in 2 different styles. another thing I can always change my mind about later if I want to upgrade.

by the way, my opening from star trek, there's a reel of bloopers from the original series and at one point you hear Shatner say "captain's log, stardate, uhhh..." and trail off because he forgot his line. I found this probably funnier than it is, and for some reason it stuck in my head. and now it seems to be sticking in my build journal entries.

success at last


fancy window frames. how did this happen? these things just happen.

[mobius]

captain's log, stardate, uhh... 04 03 2014
today's progress report: put another coat of "fast dry" poly on the PTO door (frame, its only a frame really.) hung it to dry this time, rather than laying it on wax paper as the back didn't properly dry that way. bought some 320, 400 and 600 grit sandpaper, also some 000 or was it 0000 steel wool. for some reason I want this thing to be like glass, which is daft since the rest of it is mostly pretty distressed looking. what was I thinking?

finally made myself finish sanding the joint compound I'd slathered all over the interior to fill holes and smooth things out. vacuumed up the plaster dust and took a wet rag to the entire thing, that's right, I had to give my Tardis a sponge bath. pre-drilled and did a test fitting of the St John's medallion. I have to start thinking about the doorknob I'm putting on this. I have plates, a knob and a spindle (the square shaped (when viewed on end) metal rod that goes through old fashioned mortise locks in doors) an interior plate which I might use, no knob selected for the inside yet, and I have to consult my notes, I had the idea the knob would only be a pull knob and not be connected to a strike, which means I had some other idea for how to keep the door physically closed, and possibly locked, but now I can't think what it was, and am thinking, "why don't I install an actual mortise lock" tho drilling and chiseling for those is a bother, did a few recently, not tons of fun. also the door's a bit thin. might have to pad it out on the inside to accommodate a mortise mechanism.

I definitely am at the impatient point (again?) where I just want it to be done! so I'm thinking of what can I put off til later, like making the St John's sign light up, that can wait. I can trace the octagon inside the frame, and cut a hole that size later, after the box is home. sounds can happen later. phone will be installed after the box is in place. lighting can't wait though.

next to do, the inside and outside each need at least one more coat of white and blue paint, respectively, and I want to mill some extensions to the "feet" on the inside so there's no visible gap at the bottom of the walls on the inside, even tho it doesn't really need them structurally. might help with the balance, the whole box leans to the right, but that could be due to the pitch of the cellar floor, no idea, haven't checked level yet. or plumbness. probably ought to I suppose.



oh yes, this is my fresnell. I just have to go replace it with a new one.



dramatic shot! can't wait to do this with the windows in and a thousand watts of halogen!

[galacticprobe]

A thousand watts of halogen?! Stand back... well back. Have a fire extinguisher handy, hope your paint doesn't start bubbling off, and your windows don't start melting. (Oh yeah... and wear some seriously dark sun glasses! )

Your Old Girl is looking (to use the Victorian vernacular) phantasmagorical! And that vine on the center divide really does look subdued enough that when you notice it, it really pops. I thought it would look good highlighted in gold, but you called it there; making it all blue really works! You also did a bang-up job on that St. John logo - which doesn't have "St. John Ambulance" written on it anywhere! I love it! It has all of the St. John Ambulance's mottoes, or would that be their (as we called them in the Coast Guard) "Core Values", beautifully scrolled around it. It's that center with the arrowheads and the animals that screams "St. John Ambulance Association". As I said: phantasmagorical!

I'm really curious to see how you assemble the top lamp. (Pagoda-style lamp cap? Turned-wood struts connecting it to the base?)

The mind races!

Dino.

[mobius]

captain's log, stardate, uhh... 04 04-05 2014

just had a thought, thick black foam weather stripping on the back would keep light from bleeding out.
so after 10pm last night I went down and painted the interior with its 2nd coat of white, 3rd coat in total. definitely going to need one more coat, nice to have the vent frames match the walls. Tried using some shims, and a prybar to tilt the thing to the left more and get the tops of the doors to align, to no avail. maybe once the roof is on it will sit right, but I have to figure out what's going on with the doors before then.  

   looked through my notes, found my plan had been to add a Yale type lock above the mortise style "dummy" knob, which won't have to turn, tho it will turn, but turning it won't do anything, it's a pull knob. looking at the box I remembered why I can't put a mortise in, door thickness isn't so much the issue, it's the fact that it would run into the space, created by the framed panel I think. I could add sufficient wood on the inside to house it, but I think it would start to get too fat and cause problems opening the door 90 degrees.  I'll measure but I don't think it'll work.

I should dig through my boxes of knobs and door hardware see what I have, I know I have Yale style locks. Zarquon only knows what else, I found a bag of screen clips, things I bought 3 packets of. Might return those if I have enough in the bag. they're from old interior vinyl storm windows on my house, which have since been replaced. Oh I did see a sort of mini skeleton key type lock at Rockler, that took a not so mini skeleton key, which would be nice, I don't think its strike is long enough though. might pay a visit to Boston lock & safe, only a few blocks away is the oldest locksmith in the US. been at it since 1790! maybe they have some obscure lock that would work for me.

french doors that open inwards with a central lock, a person could conceivably push open anyway with enough brute force, need to add a barrel bolt to the left door at the top, and possibly bottom, I suppose. not that I'm planning on keeping it locked, or worrying too much, no one will enter uninvited. not with the force field up anyway. heh. think I should put felt on the bottom to protect the floor, which is in pretty good shape for the most part, like to leave it that way. also thinking about mentioning to my rocky horror cast that I'm building this, we do "theme" shows sometimes, could do a Doctor Who version of Rocky Horror, there's a door prop in the show my box could fill in for, but that'd involve moving it which I'd rather not do. maybe once though. would be pretty epic. we shall see.

saturday. 4-5-14
nailed the munton frames into the doors, only the doors so far, installed the phone chamber door, and the St John's medallion. will be doing more work on that later, but it's good enough for now. my pal Dave helped sand the phone chamber frame front, using 600 and then 12,000 grit (that is not a typo) sandpaper, getting it to look like glass. astounding finish, holy cow, using that stuff on the next guitar I build. friday I put another coat on the outside, and solved my level/plumb issue, the cellar floor is actually level, at least in front of my box anyway, she just needed a small shim in just the right spot to level her, and I found the spot. I missed a spot painting the interior the other day, and I'm not thrilled with my patching work results everywhere, but I can address those things later, onward and upwards, good to have things to do later too, wot. always tinkering with the old bird.


Dino, the thousand watts I refer to are worklights, just going to put them inside for a few photos, don't panic, I know what I'm doing, scientifically, and morally! the lantern is nothing special really, just 2 toroids joined by 3 vertical pipes, basically, open at the top so the glass can hit the ceiling and be as tall as possible, which sadly is 4" but better than nothing, wouldn't do not to have a light on top. a taller lantern will replace it, when I move. the way I designed it, it currently slides into place, then the glass is pushed up into it to hold it in place, and other stuff will hold that, and the lamp housing up.

[galacticprobe]

french doors that open inwards with a central lock, a person could conceivably push open anyway with enough brute force, need to add a barrel bolt to the left door at the top, and possibly bottom, I suppose.

You wouldn't be very far from the original 2005-2009 TARDIS prop. When you look at those doors from the inside - and it's really noticeable at the start of "The Eleventh Hour" when the Doctor finally climbs back inside the TARDIS and falls back against the closed doors - there are barrel bolts (the large kind) on the top and bottom of the door with the Phone Panel on it. So if you did go with the barrel bolt plan, you'd be quite accurate.

Dino, the thousand watts I refer to are worklights, just going to put them inside for a few photos, don't panic, I know what I'm doing, scientifically, and morally!

Phew! Can't be too careful, though. Some people do get a bit enthusiastic (sometimes too much so). Just look at what Purple said about the 2005 console: it was built to be lit with regular house bulbs, and then for the mini-episode after the 9th Doctor regenerates, and before 10th Doctor appears in "Christmas Invasion", some goofuss went and replaced those bulbs with halogens, which melted several panels and the column casing, all of which had to be rebuilt.

the lantern is nothing special really, just 2 toroids joined by 3 vertical pipes, basically, open at the top so the glass can hit the ceiling and be as tall as possible, which sadly is 4" but better than nothing, wouldn't do not to have a light on top. a taller lantern will replace it, when I move.

Wow. I hope once you get settled and get a "full" lamp on top, it has a chance to get as fancy as the rest of this beautiful lady. (A lady this beautiful, in such a beautiful dress with those beautiful accents you've given her, should have a beautiful "hat" to go with the rest of her outfit! )

Dino.

[mobius]

captain's log, stardate, uhh... 04  2014

spent some time on the computer working on the PTO sign. tried all sorts of fonts, finally decided to use the classic file from this site, amended since my sign is taller and thinner than standard, with a crown on top and lion on the bottom to pad it out a bit. still determined to figure out how to get a good looking result with clear glass and letters painted or otherwise apparently affixed onto it, but that will be part of phase II the upgrade. meanwhile I'm going to print this thing out and move forwards.

so... I emailed myself my sign jpeg, downloaded it onto my mum's mac so I could print it, and I could write a  book on why I hate apple computers, PCs suck, but Macs blow. the preview showed it negative, white text on black background, this has never happened to me before. I thought "have I gone mad?" that's not the file I saved, but when I went to print it, the print preview looked right. so I printed it. print preview asked if I wanted to fit it to the page, or print at 100%, well obviously I want 100% right? because I made it 8.5 x 11" in photoshop so it would just print out the right size, no problem, but when I clicked that, it suddenly blew up the image and showed me a close up of part of it, and I knew in my hearts of hearts, that it was showing me precisely what it intended to print, so I opted for fitting it to the page, there was no other option offered.

first it printed the top 3rd of the crown on one piece of paper, then on a 2nd page, it printed the rest of it. I crumpled these up and turned it off, and went to my dad's mac. he has a better printer, couldn't find his password, so I decided to just hook a printer up to my PC laptop, found a firewire, plugged it in, and it said it was trying to load the driver but had failed, I went to HP, got the driver, after first almost being suckered into downloading a driver from some 3rd party site, stopped that just in time once I realised, and it said it didn't install properly. tried again to no avail, it said it needed to restart, so I said ok, and it said do you want to install updates and shut down? I said no I want to restart, and hoped it would install its updates and restart. but I gave up at that point and went back down, found my dad's password and printed it out. fit to screen. actually about 10% smaller than I wanted, but I used it anyway, will reprint it later. maybe if I save it as a PDF. Dave said use Word, not image preview or whatever it was next time. very very frustrating, but it looked really nice anyway. all this was after my rehearsal was cancelled at the last minute, freeing me up to work on the time machine all day, also the bee hive.

   cut the glass for the windows, put the frames in, had to put the glass in first, and make sure the frames would seat back far enough to leave room for the front metallic frames. I spent some time trying to clean black paint off of old storm window clips, when I decided it wasn't worth my time, and decided to just go ahead and use the shiny new ones I'd bought. I told myself I wasn't going to nail the frames in yet, but I kind of had to, then cracked open the window glass treatment, Artscape window film, a sales rep for the company happened to have been at home depot when I bought it, so I talked to her about how to use it, and how it worked, just use lightly soapy water, there is no adhesive, and a squeegee, I asked if they sold one of those and she said I could just use a credit card, I said I had plastic putty knives, and those would certainly work. consequently I was rather shocked when after opening the 2nd of 2 packages, a small bag fell out, containing 2 black things which snapped together into a squeegee! you'd think the company would tell their sales rep that random packages may contain them! in any case I used it. was harder with "texture 12" which was rough enough that the thing caught on it, but worked well enough. some wax paper stuck to it and had to be really scraped off, but I'd still recommend the product. Dave was incredulous when I explained that the 2 lower outer panes on each window were a different type of glass, I said I didn't know why, but it looked like the letter T, to which he immediately replied "Telephone!" and I thought, that's brilliant, I wonder if he's right. does anyone know?

 I found a piece of copper, I had to trim a little shorter, or less wide really, and used copper nails to make it a kick-plate for inside the right door, looks good! putting the frames in was exciting, but treating the glass was magical. I took some pictures

contemplating one of those silver L shaped door pull handles for the inside handle instead of a knob. door sign looks so good lit up, very tempting to do the same to the medallion. easy to light it, just open the back panel!

next to do, attach the window frames, and figure out the doorknob and lock. then up to the signs and roof, and lantern!

[hb88banzai]

Absolutely beautiful build! An inspired design - can't wait to see it completed.

Dave was incredulous when I explained that the 2 lower outer panes on each window were a different type of glass, I said I didn't know why, but it looked like the letter T, to which he immediately replied "Telephone!" and I thought, that's brilliant, I wonder if he's right. does anyone know?

I'm afraid it's a bit more mundane than that. The reason the TARDIS windows have that pattern is that they were meant to at least partially emulate the pattern on real Police Boxes in their later years, which actually had clear glass only in the top row, textured glass in the bottom corners and blue-tinted glass at bottom centre of each window. So it's basically the same pattern, just substituting clear glass in the bottom for the blue (lower cost and visually simpler, most likely).

The reason for that pattern in Police Boxes is also a bit mundane, though eminently practical - to make it relatively easy for a Constable inside to look out and have the interior well lit during daylight hours without turning the light on, while at the same time discouraging somebody outside from getting a clear view at what was going on inside. An occupant could thereby observe without being observed.

Actually, for the first six or seven years that Metropolitan Police Boxes were erected all the panes except the lower centre ones were textured (pebbled glass), with those centre ones being blue-tinted smooth glass (like later models) as the sole way to look out (other than popping your head out the door). The textured glass served the same purpose it still does in things like shower doors, to allow light in while depriving anybody a clear view of the other side by breaking up the image via semi-randomized refraction.

Later on it was apparently determined that few people were tall enough to worry about them looking in through the top panes so they were made fully clear so somebody inside (who has a higher vantage point than someone standing on the ground) would have more views of what was going on outside (perhaps including the weather) and with full colour when necessary rather than the limited blue-tinted scenes visible through the lower non-textured panes.

I imagine the original arrangement must have made things a bit claustrophobic inside with no clear views of the world outside.

[galacticprobe]

The textured glass served the same purpose it still does ... to allow light in while depriving anybody a clear view of the other side by breaking up the image via semi-randomized refraction.

HB, that definitely sounds like an explanation which could have come straight from the Doctor, himself! (Now, can you say it at breakneck speed, while waving your arms about? )

Dino.