Sorvan's TARDIS

[mantamatt]

Hi Sorvan,

Took me a while to stumble across your build thread  and I must say I'm very impressed with your window frame design. I  recently made up some more window frames a la KiwiDoc's build guide ( a big improvement on my original frame design) and even that amount of mental juggling (making sure not to cut the grooves on the wrong side) was challenging enough( being a bear with little brain).

I really like the way you have built the rear of the frames so that the glass fits up against the frames nicely. From the pictures I've seen of Crich this looks the same.

I've just finished my third window frame replete with cast pebbled glass and while they look fine must confess that I probably made a bit of a mistake ordering the glass panes so that they would fit exactly in the holes of the frames. It means that fixing them in place requires the use of pins and putty and although the panes won't fall out, it's not as well designed as it could have been. You clearly won't have this problem with your design. I hope you manage to source the glass more cheaply than antique studio. I certainly couldn't afford any more than 4 panes after they put their prices up.

It looks like the rest of your build is going to be of the same quality. Especially excited that you are building a Mackenzie Trench Police Box, like Mark. It'll be the first one in history  that side of the pond! Looking forward to lots of pictures.

Matt

[Sorvan]

So I started by roughly cutting the rectangular piece of plywood into 4 over-sized triangles with the portable circular saw (and a jigsaw to deal with the bit in the middle).  The way I set it up, there was about 2 inches between my real cut lines so I had space to cut uneven lines.


I then took that wooden strip. and screwed it onto the plywood, 4.25" away from where I wanted the blade to cut (this was the magical distance I learned from yesterdays experiment.  I decided to pre-drill all the holes in the plywood, as I didn't want it slipping around when I was trying to screw down my strip.


On the first board that I cut, I noticed that when I got to the end of the piece, it was easier to move it out of place (most of the board was past the edge of the table, and there wasn't much of the strip attached to the board that was still in the slot.

I managed to do better on the rest of the cuts, but this would have been easier to do with an extra pair of hands (unfortunately my fiancee was out tonight).

So just to see how I was doing, I decided to try assembling it... not bad I think.  I can certainly see that cutting is the easy part of the job compared to actually assembling it.

I think I'll build a frame of the exact size so I can drop the pieces in and not have to worry about the pieces moving around (I sort of did that here, but just used a few screws which isn't really enough).  Even though I couldn't get it perfect in my 10 minutes of fiddling, I can see that the angle I put on the table saw was right... I haven't forgotten my trig after all.

Colin

[cyberleader1991]

What angle did you make your roof panels rise at, Sorvan? I did mine at 10 degrees, I don't know what the concensus is...

[Sorvan]

This part of the roof is at 15°.  I'll have a 10° angle on the top of each of the steps, and a 5° angle for the tops of the signs.

Colin

[Scarfwearer]

Your roof is looking good. Hope your measuring and cutting is more accurate than mine .
I built a taller roof for my box back in July (replacing my Season 18 style roof). I'm not aware of anyone ever having got a perfect fit for the sloping bits - it seems to be a general problem. This time I didn't try - I just used loads of filler!

Crispin

[Sorvan]

I spent the evening sawing and figuring out stuff, but nothing that I feel is really interesting enough to show.  I found out where to get fiberglass supplies today, and plan to pick some stuff up on Saturday.

Mantawrays, I couldn't find another source of pebbled glass much less a cheaper one.  I think I'll just buy one piece and follow your excellent example and cast what I need.  I spent a fair amount of time looking at the few pictures I could find with police box windows to make them similar.  There are a few details I wasn't sure about and a few things I felt I needed to change since I'm making them out of wood, but I'm pretty happy with the design.  One of the things I really like that's in some of the pictures, are the little "arms" that prevent the windows from opening up too far.  I really want to do those, but haven't figured out how yet.

ScarfWearer, I'm actually really happy with how I cut the boards.  There's one spot in the cut on three of the four boards where it went out of line a little (as can be seen on yesterday's picture), but it's only off the line by less than 1/16th of an inch (around 1mm) and I'll be able to shave those down before I glue them together.  As I've said, the join angle is bang on... it's looking like I might not need to filler! <cross fingers>  I guess I'll know more when I eventually glue them together.  That'll probably happen on Saturday.

Colin

[Sorvan]

Today, I have glued one corner.


Amazing as it may seem (to me at least), that's it for the day.  When I picked up the resin, I thought I'd get the slow setting stuff so I'd have lots of work time.... I should have gotten the faster setting stuff as it didn't take me long to do the gluing and the slow stuff takes 10-15 hours to cure, so I'll only be doing one corner a day (get one right, move onto the next).  Maybe when I get around to actually fiberglassing it, I'll appreciate the extra work time.

As you can see, I used hinges on the top to attach the pieces of plywood together.  I tried using pieces of wood screwed to the underside to keep them together, but this didn't give me the accuracy I was looking for.  The waxy papery stuff that's between the hinges and the wood is in fact wax paper.  I don't want the hinges stuck to the roof, and epoxy doesn't stick to wax (hopefully this works).  I've also got a piece of wax paper under the entire joint should anything drip.

Those of you with keen eyes may notice that I'm using West Systems epoxy.  Although there are many choices out there, I picked West Systems for two important reasons:
1) It was one of the two brands that the store had
2) It had metering pumps - so I don't have to measure anything (one pump of resin + one pump of hardener).

The resin isn't actually purple, that color happened because I added some filler to make the resin thicker (note to self: remember to don the respirator BEFORE opening the can of microballoons next time).

I really hope this performs to my expectations.  I've already spent around C$200 (£100) on the roof (just the roof) and I'm not done yet.

Colin

[cyberleader1991]

Hmmm...  is there any kind of support under those panels, Sorvan?

[Sorvan]

Hi Tom,

I've currently got wooden bracing screwed under the three edges that aren't being glued.  Before I take off the hinges from the glued side, I plan on replacing the brace on that corner (so I don't stress the epoxy right away).  When I've finished attaching the "steps" and fiberglassing the top, I'll remove the wooden braces as by that point they won't be needed.  I may run some epoxy along the inside seams just to clean up the appearance (that would also strengthen it a bit).  One of the reasons I chose to use 3/4" plywood is so I don't need lots of internal structure to hold the roof up.

Colin

[Scarfwearer]

Wow - 3/4" ply! Should be strong enough to 'Adric'. Keep an eye on the total weight though - you're going to have to lift this thing about 7' off the ground to set it on top of your box when you're done. The roof on my box is 66lb (30kg) and lifting up there on a step ladder is no joke...

EDIT: I just looked back through the thread - I'm repeating myself! Sorry! (I'm clearly losing it... )

Crispin

[cyberleader1991]

I also exclusively used 3/4" ply, not out of choice, but because that's what my wife bought for me!  8-)

I'd rather have used 1" ply, but I wasn't able to find anyone who sells it here in NB... what about MB?

Cheers Tom

[Scarfwearer]

Well, my panels are 1/2" plywood (well, MDO, actually) with 1/2 MDF for the decoration (not a good idea outside though). My box weighs about 600lb total (270kg). It's pretty tough and solid though.

A block and tackle sounds like a good idea 

Crispin

[Sorvan]

So today I unfastened the hinges and flipped over the roof before reattaching the wooden support.


I didn't hear any cracking when I flipped it and while the other corners flexed a bit the glued one stayed rock steady, so I think it'll last until at least I'm finished gluing.  I did notice that there is a little gap between the pieces on the bottom which wasn't completely filled all the way along the seam.


It's about 1/32" wide (just under 1mm), and varying depths.  Once I've glued all the edges, I'll fill this up (as well as any other place that has a similar issue).  I think part of my problem was that I didn't make the resin thick enough (didn't add enough filler).  I was a bit leery of adding too much as I purchased the easy to sand but not as strong filler, and I didn't want to weaken the joint by using too much of it.  After gluing together the first edge, I decided to just go ahead and spend more money, so now I have a high strength (but hard to sand) filler as well.

Besides a different filler, I also made another change.  I found that the while the wax paper worked great, it was rather delicate so today I reinforced it with some tape (happened to have green painters tape handy).


Colin (who's looking forward to doing edge #3)

[Scarfwearer]

The hinges are a good idea - I never thought of that. With thick plywood on top you could put the hinges back on, but underneath. Another option is to use piano hinges (aka continuous hinges), which come in a strip that you can cut...

Crispin

[Sorvan]

Crispin,
I'd never actually heard about MDO (Medium Density Overlay) before your post so I had to Google it.  That sounds right out of my price range, especially as I'd like to texture the box so having perfectly smooth faces isn't that important.

As for the hinges, I had initially thought about cutting out more wooden supports (like the ones on the back, but with the opposite angle), but decided that I was feeling lazy, and I had some hinges lying around (the hinges I purchased for my windows actually).  They're just temporary to keep the wood together while the epoxy is curing.  Once the epoxy is complete, they'll go back in the drawer.  I suppose if someone needed extra stregnth on the edges, some piano hinges could work.  I just don't think I need it.

Colin