How thick is the Smith door?

[therailwayman]

Right, so...

Just out of curiosity, for those of you who have operable phone doors on your TARDIS builds, how thick did you make your doors?  Full 1 1/2" or a thinner dimension?

I plan on having both front doors open, but I also plan on putting a removable box behind the phone door to hold my telephone (which will be a standard, rotary telephone, similar to the one in "The Bells of St. John").  The sign will be printed on plexiglass and will be illuminated... hopefully with EL paper (although, I may use LEDs if the EL paper is too cost prohibitive).

So, I'm just wondering how thick my door should be.  Any comments/advice and/or concerns welcome.


Oh, and how big of a handle should I have on the door?  5" (12.5cm)?  (I know it's smaller than the main door, anyway.)  I have a friend in the UK who's willing to obtain the furniture for me, I just need to give him sizes.

[DoctorWho8]

About 1 3/4". 3/4" cladding on the front and back with a full sized sheet of 1/4" plywood sandwiched between front and back cladding.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

[therailwayman]

Bill,

Just for clarification, does that include the "phone hatch" as well?  Or is that a little thinner in construction?  I know both the entry doors are built with that 3/4 - 1/4 - 3/4 "sandwich," but isn't the "Pull to Open" hatch more like 3/4" or an inch in thickness?

And how far in is the sign recessed from the face of the hatch, 3/4"?

Just trying to figure out how much material I have to work with so I can engineer my EL paper lighting unit (or, "Plan B," should that not work out).

[Rassilons Rod]

My plan (when I eventually get to such things) is just to make the PTO frame the same thickness as the cladding and let the thickness of the sign behind it give it that tiny bit of protrusion.

[DoctorWho8]

I would look at Rubbertoe Replica's door sign pictures.  That may help gauge the deepness of the door sign.
http://www.rubbertoereplicas.com/#!product/zoom13pv/949424764/tardis-door-replica
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

EDIT: URL FIXED (Marc)

[galacticprobe]

Just a note with Bill's link... to get directly to the Phone Panel Door page, you'll need to copy and paste onto the URL everything after the #. For some reason once the Forum software sees that "!" in the URL, it cuts off the rest of the URL so the link part only takes you to the front page. But once there just paste the rest of the URL address onto the end and press Enter/Return and you'll go straight to the right page. (Or you could just copy and paste the entire URL into the browser's address bar.) (Link fixed by admin)

On another note, didn't someone here just buy one of these and receive it not long ago? Perhaps that person would be so kind as to give a quick thickness measurement? The above Rubbertoe page does give dims - presumably for the full-size version judging by the size - for length and width (in inches and mm), but nothing for thickness.

Dino.

[Rassilons Rod]

On another note, didn't someone here just buy one of these and receive it not long ago? Perhaps that person would be so kind as to give a quick thickness measurement? The above Rubbertoe page does give dims - presumably for the full-size version judging by the size - for length and width (in inches and mm), but nothing for thickness.

Dino.

That was RobS: http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?action=profile;u=303

[therailwayman]

You know...

I was just looking at Cosmic Hobo's (re)build, and saw that they built a new "Pull to Open" door that was 1/2" thick.  It looks just a hair narrower than the 2010 "hatch," so I'm thinking the PTO door is about 3/4" thick.  And looking at the Smith box and the Rubbertoe replicas, it looks like the sign is recessed about 1/4" deep.  So, routing a channel 3/8" deep net me the desired effect.

What do you guys think?