dustyfro's TARDIS

[dustyfro]

Hello everyone.  I'm Hannah and this is my first time building ANYTHING, much less a TARDIS.  I was lucky to have a building buddy visiting for a week to solidify the plans, buy lumber, and get things started (he did the dowel joints on everything for which I would have had no patience.  Now I'm flying solo.  Here's what we got completed in that time.

The beginning of the right hand door:

We joined and glued the frame, clamped it to dry, then attached the plywood to the back.

Door back

glued the plywood to the back and secured it with short screws

side frame

My friend dowel jointed all the corners before we started attaching.  He's got those pictures on his camera, so I'll try to post them later.  We glued the center slats together first and clamped them, then joined the rest of the mirror image frames and clamped them with the long clamps.  The big block was required to hold down the bottom, which was bowing out with the force of the clamp because it's not quite squared on the edges.

The slats are made of 1x3s and 1x4s and the plywood is luann.  We also got the left hand door framed, but with only two panels worth of plywood to make room for the phone door.  I neglected to square the crosspiece for that before gluing, so now it's slightly off.  I'm sure that will come back to bite me when I go to make that door.

[soldierblue]

Excellent job. well done

[dustyfro]

I put a few pictures of my build on craftster.org, a forum for arts and crafts, and within a week it had 50 "OH WOW I WANT ONE!" replies and it was a "featured project" on the home page for a day.  I linked to my thread here and now a bunch of crafty ladies are trying to get their husbands to build one.  

[Scarfwearer]

We got loads of people coming to look. I wondered what was going on for a while. This is now the most looked-at topic on the forum!

Crispin

[TG]

Looking great!
Good luck with your build
and Welcome to Tardis Rebuilders!

[Doctor Iz]

Hannah,

Welcome to TR2... So far your off to a great start.  The hardest part is taking the first step.  We are all here for you if you need help along the way.  Keep the photos coming. 

cheers,
Jon~

[dustyfro]

I keep forgetting to take my camera to the workshop.  I got the plywood on one of the side frames, the other side framed, and the corner posts are all put together.

I don't know how I'm going to get the cross slats on the doors and sides and be able to flip it over and screw them on the back without them sliding around.  They're not all snug enough to stay in the frame.  Any suggestions?

[Scarfwearer]

Well, I glued mine. I held the styles in place with clamps, but the cross pieces were just weighted with bricks until the glue dried. Make sure they don't slide out of position on the glue while drying, though.

Crispin

[Dematerialiser]

Hi Hannah

You've made a great start there! I hadn't built anything as big as a Tardis when I started either - but it gets easier as it goes along (I ended up rebuilding parts that I originally had built for me by a 'professional' woodworker because I thought I could do a better job, an eye for detail goes a long way! :-)

Anyway, the way I handled things like your cross-slats was to glue and panel-pin them on from the front. All you need to do then is counter-sink the nail-heads and fill the little hole with good wood filler - a quick sand and you'd never know the nails are in there. Then, if you really want the glue to stick well, you can drill a couple of pilot-holes through the back of the panel and into the cross-slats - but be careful not to drill all the way through the slat - use a bit of tape on the drill bit to know how deep to drill. The reason I'm saying you'd need pilot holes is to avoid trying to drive screws into solid wood, which might push the slat away from the panel, even when glued and nailed. Then screw it all together. It'll never come apart that way, even if things bend and bow a little with changes in temperature (or the dreaded water-damage if it's going outside)

Hope that helps - keep up the good work!

cheers
Chris

[throgmorton]

Nice work going on there keep it up.

I thought I would pass on my experience of putting together doors in that way my doors although only 1/3rd scale did show evidence of warping in fact my right hand door (as you look from the front) is still slightly warped and doesnt quite fit flush although you cant see it unless you really look and the door is loose anyway so I can get in to the innards so its not really a problem.

The same applied to my window builds too!
I  finished up putting heavy weights on them whilst they were underneath some pieces of wood to flatten them out, of course now they are in place its no problem I hope they stay that way.

Chris E.

[dustyfro]

My short screws are only 3/4" long.  Do I really need pilot holes for something that short?  I did pilot holes for the long screws on the corner posts because they were 2".

[Dematerialiser]

Hi Hannah

It's up to you really, I usually do pilot holes with anything that involves glueing, just so that you can guarantee no movement when you screw it all together - if you're pushing hard on a drill or screwdriver you don't want things to shift. Either way, I'm sure you'll do a great job, looking at your progress so far :-)

cheers
Chris

[dustyfro]

I finally got some new pictures and did what feels like a lot of work today.

This is the side frame before plywood


after plywood


doors with plywood


doors with cross slats


A closeup of the cross slat that would go right under the phone door.  The plywood peeks out a bit, but I figure that will stop the door from swinging back in (excuses, excuses).  You can see here that I decided to glue the cross slats and nail them with a "wire brad" finishing nail before I flipped them over and screwed them on from the back.  I'm going to have to get some wood putty to cover the nails and the slats that were cut just a little too short for one side of the side frames.


one of the sides with cross slats (They're HEAVY when I get them all together)


all four cornerposts


closeup of the cornerposts.  1x3 and 1x4 joined with nails and stabilized with 2x2s and hefty #10 screws.  My uncle thinks that each of these could hold 600 pounds!

[avadh]

Great work Hannah coming along really well.

[DoctorWho8]

As far as the sign door pushing back into the cubby, what you could do is like at the top, put a very thin piece of wood (no thicker than 1/8 in.) as a door stopper to the back of the opening.
Bill Rudloff