1/6 scale Smith Tardis Build

[DoctorWho8]

Well done on that little problem solving!
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

[cartman1973]

Cheers Bill, I appreciate the support.

I have to admit that there have been some moments already where I have looked at the pictures of some of the great builds others have done and I wonder what I have got myself into... but this is the most fun I've had in my workshop since I made my father a 12" Bowie Knife! 

Thanks

Gavin

[cartman1973]

Today started with some drawing of dimensions and some calculations. I measured out for the rails and stiles on the doors and walls, and calculated how many I needed. I had rather optimistically thought I might get them all out of a 24"x12" piece of 1/8" lite plywood but I was way off - all together I will need at least another two pieces, possibly three depending on what I decide to make the sign boxes out of...

I have started thinking about the signs... I like some of the cheaper methods described on this site and plan on having a go at them soon. This led to me to consider the little phone door.. do I want to make it a real, operating door...? My first thought before starting the project was 'Yes', since then I'm not so sure. I wonder if it might be unsuitable for a six year old to play with and whether I might be better with a solid panel instead? Any ideas welcome...

The next job was to start on the roof. I am still trying to get my head around the best method of construction and reinforcement, without making it overly heavy. I started with the somewhat unorthodox choice of cutting out some thin stock for the lower level of the stack. The stock needed to be 1/4" wide x 8 1/8" long x 9/16" high.

This is pretty tiny to try and rip on a 10" table saw and below you can see a major problem. If I try to rip stock that thin there is a very good chance the table saw will grab the wood off me and either drag it into the hole around the blade, or simply throw it back at me. On better table saws you can get something called a 'zero clearance insert' which completely fills that space and eliminates the problem. I haven't got one of those but I can make one pretty easily that will do for a couple of rips, which is all I need.



One of my leftover spare walls (see yesterday's post   ) was just right. I lowered the blade below the surface of the table, and then clamped the MDF into place, making sure to entirely cover the hole.



Then with the saw running, you slowly (but not too slowly or you can set stuff on fire!) raise the blade through the MDF.



Keep going until the blade is sufficiently high to rip the stock effectively.



Then being extremely careful you can use a push stick (the orange thing) to rip the stock (after first putting it through the planer to ensure it is smooth and straight).



Using my fine cut 'Gentlemen's Saw' I cut the stock into pieces that were just over the final length.



A quick check against the plans before cutting the rest out ('measure twice etc') and it looks good.



First four pieces checked against the plans. All good. (Must be a mistake coming soon, surely..?)



The next piece of stock was only just the right length - literally to the 1/16" there was no room for error so the cut had to be spot on...



The next step was to form the mitres on the corners. I couldn't find my mitre box anywhere, so without rigging something equivalent up, hand cutting was out. Due to the small size of the stock I could have routed them with a chamfer bit - but I'd had enough of the router table yesterday, so I decided to just sand them instead.

First I did a test with some leftover stock that was not long enough to be used - that will do!  



This is the setup I used on my baby disc/belt sander. It is perfect for working with small stock like this.



With one end done, I carefully checked the overall length, and marked it. Making doubly sure I was putting the mitre on the same side as the other one (!) I very carefully sanded the other end, stopping regularly to check the results against the already completed piece.



With the first four pieces complete it was time for my first 'mock up' to check the accuracy.



As you can see it's not quite there yet... it is out by about 1/16" which I don't understand as I checked all the pieces against each other before taping them up. At least all I need to do is take a bit more material off the back one and the right one (as they appear in the photo) and it should be spot on.



So, not exactly tons of visible progress today but as I say I've also spent time on the planning for the rails and stiles, and the signs, so not too bad today.

Thanks for looking.

Gavin

[cartman1973]

The roof pieces from yesterday needed some cleaning up so I put together a quick sanding jig from some 3mm MDF scraps so that when I sand the pieces I can be confident that they stay square - I usually manage to 'round over' small stock like this if I'm not careful so this should help me avoid that problem.



Of course, me being me, I had already managed to dig a whacking great 'divot' out of one of the pieces (the one closest to the camera is now almost 1/8" too narrow along almost 2/3 of its length), so again the wood filler had to make an appearance.



Just like icing a long thin cake...  



Moving on to make the same pieces for the other tardis, I remembered that the rest of the stock I had ripped was slightly too large - it was 11/16" wide or thereabouts when it needed to be 9/16" wide. I had shied away from trying to trim it on the table saw because of how narrow it was already, so I needed to come up with an alternative solution.

I decided to build an old faithful woodworker's tool in miniature - a 'shooting board' (insert your own spelling, it appears variously as 'chuting', 'shuting' etc) to help me plane the stock accurately to the correct dimensions.



So I gathered some off cuts of MDF and started nailing them together. The plan evolved as building progressed... and I spent a considerable amount of time ensuring that everything was flat and square as I went, because any inaccuracies here and you might as well throw the thing away...



...and after much longer than I would have liked, here it is. With the fence set to 9/16" I can be confident that the stock will be the right size once the plane stops removing material.



After a pause of about 20 minutes to sharpen the iron on my block plane - success. The plane stopped digging in and removing chunks, and started gliding and removing nice shavings - quietly, dust free and leaving a nice finish that doesn't need sanding.  



Six of the pieces are now as just about as close as I can get them to the plan.



But of course this build wouldn't be complete with only one mistake a day...   I got a bit carried away on the sanding wheel...



...so out again with the wood filler (I'm thinking of having that translated into Latin and put on my family coat of arms... I wonder what it would be...? The miracle of the internet gives us 'ita denuo cum ligno filler'... hmm not sure I fully believe Google on this one... 'ligno' for wood, yes, but 'filler' for filler?



And's all there is to show for today... thinking about the windows, and thinking about taking the same approach Phillipw took - i.e. laser cutting them. Unfortunately I don't have my own laser cutter so I'm considering trying these guys: http://www.razorlab.co.uk/ providing they don't turn out to be too expensive (on a pretty tight budget for these builds). They offer a nice white acrylic that looks perfect to me for both the windows, the PTO sign and actually probably the St John Ambulance medallion - does anyone have any experience with them or any other suggestions?

Thanks

Gavin

[DoctorWho8]

Use some thin plywood (say 1/16" thick) from a hobby store and cut them out with an exacto knife.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

[cartman1973]

Use some thin plywood (say 1/16" thick) from a hobby store and cut them out with an exacto knife.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

Cheers Bill - that is the fall back plan if the acrylic is too expensive.

Didn't make it into the workshop yesterday but visited my local timber yard and picked up various supplies including some small (M3) nuts and bolts I am considering using to fasten the sign boxes to the corner posts.

On all the builds I've looked at the sign boxes are built individually - but do they have to be? Could they not be built as one piece? I am concerned about making these models as robust as possible and just wondered if anyone else had built all four as one piece that would help lock the corner posts together in the same way the base does...?

Spent ages in the workshop today but haven't seemed to get very much finished. I started with cleaning up the filler on the lower stack pieces - they've come up lovely as you can see here, which was a great relief after I screwed them up.



Next I spent quite a long time 'fettling' the posts again - I was never fully happy with how consistent they were but had run out of patience earlier in the week. I've now grouped them into two sets of four which match the closest, and ensured they are all square and as identical as I can get them. Feeling a bit better about them now.

The pile of finished pieces continues to grow, but as it does I am growing increasingly unhappy with the MDF - it just doesn't seem very good to me .

I've got some electronics on the way for the sound effects and that has also prompted me to rethink the MDF bases. Joe is (hopefully) going to play with his quite a lot, and mine will see at least some handling - but if a bearing on a bearing guide bit can damage the base I don't think it will last for long.

I've therefore sourced some 3/4" plywood that I will edge with hardwood to create new bases. This will also give me the chance to get the angle on the edge of the base correct. When I did it the first time I just used a chamfering bit and it was too steep an angle, and therefore it didn't reach right to the edge of where the posts will be. I was going to leave it as it is but as I am now going to redo it I may as well get it right.  

The plywood base will also have a cavity routed into it to hold the battery holder for the electronics, so it needs to be stronger than the MDF. I've also decided to re-do the doors and walls in 1/8" plywood rather than the MDF. I've used a lot more Beech on the model than I originally planned , and together with the plywood I think it should look good when painted, but I have doubts over how good the MDF can be made to look alongside it. Nothing against MDF, and I am sure a lot of people can make good stuff out of it but I just think if I leave it in I will regret it later...



So after some cleaning up I moved onto creating the upper stack. For this I took some Beech, put it through the planer to get two straight faces, cut it to a width of 1 1/4" (I think it was) on the table saw, and then ran it through the thicknesser until it was 9/16" thick. This is quite thick but I want this core to really help lock the whole tardis square when it is assembled.



Then came another watershed moment when I had to decide how I was going to tackle the roof panels. Originally I was looking at creating effectively some joists like many full size and model boxes have done but I really like how PhillipW did his roof, so I decided to be brave and attempt the same approach. The first step was to cut an angle at 12.5 degrees along the top edge of the stock I had just milled for the upper roof stack.

That way when it comes to assembly, hopefully I can concentrate on getting the top and sides correct, and then trim any excess off the long bottom edge with a bearing guide router bit. The angled top edge should provide plenty of fixing area to attach the roof. That's the plan at the moment anyway...  

Can you spot today's mistake in the photo below? The decision to angle the top edge meant that I really should mitre the corners (to maintain the angle). I did my usual trick (I just don't know how...) of sanding the second mitre too short . I was working with a really limited amount of Beech again, and didn't really have the spare material to do it again... so after a bit of measuring I realised that if I just did a butt joint, I could have two longer side pieces, and two smaller ones. This meant I could turn the piece with the incorrect mitres into one of the shorter pieces. This solved the problem - and all that remains to do is to very carefully file the ends of the top edges to the shape they would have been had I mitred the pieces.

At this point I planned to glue and screw the pieces together, but I hadn't got any suitable screws, so I used some small glue blocks instead.



This actually proved to be a really good idea (purely fluke you understand) as it made assembly of the upper stack much simpler. Here you can see glue blocks attached to the smaller sides (first bit of assembly! ). By being careful about which bits I glued which way round, I could make sure there will be more long grain for the other pieces to be glued to (rather than just end grain).



And that's all for today - as I say, loads of time in the workshop but not massive amounts of progress - hopefully tomorrow I may be able to fully assemble the first roof...

Cheers

Gavin

[cartman1973]

Today I finished assembly of the first upper roof stack. The glue blocks were set, so as part of fine tuning the fit, I ganged them and sanded them.



Doing them in two parts like this made the glue ups easier, but a lot more time consuming.



Then it was time to start on making the stock for the upper roof stack for the second Tardis. The process was the same as before (planing two edges, cutting to width on the table saw), just a slight variation in the final table saw setup that worked much better in cutting the 12.5 degree cut on the top edge.



And because this time I wasn't trying to hand cut mitres, I could just cut the pieces to length on the table saw - this made fitting them all together MUCH easier than the first time around.



I took a different approach to the glue up the second time around, using masking tape on the outside to hold pieces together whilst I applied glue and clamps.



Doing the glue up all in one go was a bit more awkward, as you can see below, but hopefully it will work out okay...



Next came the smallest but one of the most challenging bits of the build so far - making the lamp cap piece for the roof. Even after deciding to copy PhillipW's approach, his words about wishing he hadn't cut the angle groove into his had haunted me and here they came to the forefront.

I took some narrow Beech stock, and using the planer and table saw I ripped it down to 1" square. It took a fair bit of hand sanding to make sure it was consistently square as it wasn't wide enough anymore to put through the planer or thicknesser. With it prepared, I was scratching my head for several minutes trying to figure out how to make this dado cut at 12.5 degrees on the table saw. Below is the setup I finally came up with. It was far from perfect and it took me a couple of goes to get it consistently right.



The piece is rotated after each cut, and the angle re-checked. After a couple of problems, in the end I clamped the angle gauge to the cross cut sled and left it there - it helped stop the stock from slipping.



Testing with some rough hand cut MDF scraps shows that the idea works - hooray!  



And here is the (almost) completed piece. I am going to wait until I figure out how to do the lamp before drilling the hole through it. I then repeated the process to produce the second piece.



Whilst we are talking about the lamp, any ideas? I saw in another post a fantastic ship's lantern, but it was at the wrong scale for my builds. I am thinking about turning a lamp and fresnel from one piece of acrylic rod (and then painting the cap) - any other suggestions?

The build will probably slow down a bit for the next couple of weeks as I am much busier at work, but I hope to do at least some bits where possible. I hope you've been finding it interesting - please feel free to give feedback/suggestions.

Cheers

Gavin

[cartman1973]

Managed to get a bit of time in the workshop this evening so I cracked on with the upper roof stacks. I was a bit worried my ambitious glue up of the second stack might come back to haunt me by having twisted or slipped or something, but it was fine.

I started off by carefully marking the areas to be removed so I didn't have any more errors - had enough of them already... I removed the excess material with a small bastard file followed by a bit of sanding with a block.



The glueup had set well and the frame seemed strong, but as Norm Abram would say '... we'll just secure that with a couple of brads.' - so I used some 1" panel pins to just add a bit of re-inforcement.



A final sand around the outside sides and the base to ensure it is all nice and flat. Check it against the plans - yep, that will do!  



Comparing the two stacks shows they are not perfect, but they are pretty darn close to what they should be.



The stack of completed components continues to grow   ...just a shame I'm going to redo the doors, and the walls and the bases...



That's all for today guys, thanks for looking.

Cheers

Gavin

[cartman1973]

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
― Thomas A. Edison

That kind of sums up this evening's efforts   - except I only found a couple of ways that wouldn't work... I have acquired some 1/16" plasticard and had a go at producing the window frames.

I was a bit nervous because as a general rule I dislike working with really sharp pointy things (where you have to apply a considerable force to get a result) ever since I stabbed myself in the left hand with a Stanley knife as a youngster...  

To start with I tried making an entire window frame in one go... I scored the material to be 2 13/16", the correct height of the window frame, and then much to my amazement, sure enough the plasticard snapped into two pieces quite nicely down the scored line, just like it is supposed to.



Then I laid out the frames for one window. I decided to start with the mortising machine (determined to use it for something) but alas, I don't think it will be useful for this job...



The plastic melted and gummed up the mortise chisel. This just ain't gonna cut it... (you see what I did there? )



Okay let's try another approach...Let's cut the parts out individually...

hmm...

...a lot of work and hassle, and very difficult (for me at least it would appear) to get repeatable results. I tried using a small file to make a half lap joint, as shown below. It worked reasonably well but you have to do it slowly or again it melts the plastic.

Also shown below is what I am going to try using for the finish on the windows. I obtained a sample of some 'limo' window tint film, and some frosted opaque film. My idea (at the moment anyway) is to use some spray photo mount adhesive to fasten them to my 3mm clear polycarbonate (you can just see it's protective film peeled back in the corner). I realised after I took the shot that the frosted film is on backing paper - doh!

I cannot and do not claim this idea as being my own, I saw it in another thread about a full size NST build by superrichi1a: http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=1831.0 and I thought he got good results and it was a great idea to try. I plan to finish the opaque panels with pieces cut from a driving licence wallet to get the pebbled effect.



And that's as far as I have got. I am thinking I need a jig so that I can hold the material securely to file the half lap joints, and then a guillotine type jig to cut it accurately to size (just 1/16") afterwards...?  

Cheers

Gavin

[cartman1973]

Look what arrived today!  

Not even Customs and Royal Mail charging me outrageous fees for delivering one tiny box could take the shine off this!  

This is what is (hopefully, fingers crossed) going to provide the sound effects for my model builds. The seller described it as a '300 second USB sound / message recording module WITH LIGHT SENSOR & PIR'. It has four programmable buttons (the blue wires) that can trigger playback of different sound files (WAV format). It also has a PIR sensor (black camera like object on left hand side) and a light sensor (in the little plastic bag) - both of which can also trigger playback sounds. The maximum capacity of the module is 300 seconds at 8k sampling rate. There are a number of devices like this available but I chose this one because the sound files could be uploaded directly to the module via USB rather than recorded via a tiny microphone. It also has several different options for controlling how the sounds are played back, e.g. looped, one time only, only whilst button held etc.



The first job was to find some new series sound FX. Not sure if I was looking in the wrong place but I couldn't seem to find them on here? Even the mp3 archive I downloaded from the dropbox link seemed to be the classic sound fx? They're great but they are different from the new ones I believe? I am sure someone will put me right about this if I'm mistaken. (In the end this proved a waste of time really   - I didn't use the interior hum after all - which I know is different - but the only cloister bell I could find was from Castrovalva).

Anyway there were a number of videos on YouTube with great quality sound effects on them, so I used a website that could rip the audio into a downloadable MP3 file. With that downloaded I used Audacity to edit the sounds from one long MP3 file into several shorter ones, and saved them as WAV files. If anyone is interested I can make them available if that's okay with the moderators?   Nice to be out of the dust for a change!



Then you have to use the PM66 writer software to upload the files to the module, and configure the various settings. This took a while to get acceptable results. To start with I couldn't get them to play at all, I then I found out by a process of elimination that it will not play the sounds while it is still connected to the USB cable. The quality was really poor, much poorer than the samples, and it was barely audible. I found out that it has two output modes, one optimised for voice, the other for digital audio. Needless to say mine was configured for voice output. Once I changed it to digital audio it was fantastic. I increased the sample rate to 16k (because I had capacity) and set the volume to maximum. I need to experiment further with the settings but for now I am just so chuffed that it works!  

My original 'sound plan' was as follows:

Button 1) Takeoff
Button 2) Landing
Button 3) Cloister Bell - perpetual loop
Button 4) Empty - stops any sounds currently playing
PIR) Interior hum - perpetual loop
Light sensor) Tardis in Flight - perpetual loop

What I figured I would do was position the PIR inside the model so that it would be triggered when either of the doors were opened. Then it would play the interior hum sound on a perpetual loop. However, I found that even if you only knocked the PIR slightly, it would interrupt any of the other playing sounds - so this idea is a no go at the moment unless I find a solution when I am experimenting. I had to unplug the PIR from the module to stop it causing problems - even when it wasn't programmed with a sound it would interrupt the others if it was triggered by the slightest movement.

For the light sensor, I had planned to place it face down in a hole in the Tardis base, so that when Joe lifts his Tardis up it would automatically play the Tardis in Flight sound. I may or may not still do this, but on reflection I don't think his parents would thank me as it could get very annoying very quickly.  

You can also assign more than one WAV file per button, and it will play a different one in turn each time the button is pressed. I am thinking about adding a Dalek and a Cyberman and maybe a sonic screwdriver to the cloister bell button but I'm not sure...

This photo shows the software that you have to use. It's not that great and the instructions are cursory at best (and I had to rescale my system screen font down from the large size I usually have to the normal size to get the software to display properly   ) but it works and does the job. Once they are programmed I shouldn't need to touch it again. What is good is that you can save the different configurations so once I have done one I can upload it straight onto the other module for my Tardis, and I can change them whenever necessary.



Below is a test video of the module in action. It's just using the four buttons, and the sounds assigned at the moment are: 1) Tardis take-off; 2) Tardis landing; 3) Looped cloister bell; 4) Stop sounds. The cloister bell sample seems a bit poor and needs replacing, but I am pretty pleased with the others so far considering the speaker isn't properly mounted yet.

Now I just have to figure out how to mount all this inside the 3/4" plywood base of the model Tardis.   I've measured it and it should fit...  

Thanks for looking.

Cheers

Gavin