Southern Fried TARDIS

[Elvis Gump]

The postman roused me from sleep at 9am with a delivery today, the consequences of being an evening shift worker. When I saw the condition of my package postmarked India, my heart sank a little because I knew it was my lamp. It was covered in "repacked by DHL" tape and looked pretty battered.  I didn't take a shot of it as I wasn't thinking very straight without coffee. Fortunately once I got through all the wrapping, my god was this thing wrapped, it was okay.
It does have some problems though the glass which seems old and chipped in places is gorgeous, a true fresnel lens! The thing seems really old, but I think that's just because its hand made and not very well. The thing has that assembled in hut feel to it, done without care, cranking out replicas by not terribly skilled labor.
You can easily see its not well made, though it ticks off all the features such a light should have though when assembled they just eyeballed where to drill for the four struts giving it a lopsided look.


Since I'll need to completely disassemble it for paint, I think the strut locations are something I can easily fix and bondo or braze to repair before paint. I'll take some more pictures in a bit, but the good news is the size is perfect for the garden lamp cap to fit with the perfect slight overhang. Its not a 100% match for the Smith/Capaldi lamp - a tad taller and not as squat, but it's darn close, closer than the dozens and dozens I scoured the web looking at.

Oh and also got my door pulls from Chiskingbees in as well. I can't wait to get the doors finished and screw them on! More pictures in a while when the coffee kicks in...

[Elvis Gump]

Ugh, this day has gotten away from me mostly because the pine pollen has finally gotten me. I'm full of benedryl or whatever those little pink pills are called and coffee trying to stay awake and the coffee's been losing the battle most of the day.

A couple of things I haven't made good pictures or updates of are progress on sign boxes over the last weeks. I had to take a second shot at a template for the hinges. I have had the Milescraft Hingemate 150 kit which is like around $13-15 at Lowes. Its great for doing door hinges out of the box, not so much sign boxes.


What I did was strip off the black plastic guide and attach it to a plywood sandwich made from some scrap as pictured earlier and duplicate the template to the plywood. My first try was rough, and though the result wouldn't show when assembled, I tried again.



I can used a big Sharpie to color the inside of the wood on this template so I could have contrast to see what the hell I was doing! All that wood on wood color was making it hard to tell where the template ended and the sign box surface started!

Each box end is a tiny bit different in dimension from an 1/8" to 1/16" off in every dimension I guess due to clamping and that I don't have a planer to ensure the lumber is more precise. So everyone is a tad unique and will create further hell attaching the to the posts I suspect... Now to rip the sign frames and attach them all before I attach the boxes to posts. Wish me a lot of luck and skill. I dread this!

Oh, the finished mortises of the hinges!

[Elvis Gump]

Another thing is the new old-looking lamp for my top light. I'm convinced the thing is newish made to go around the fresnel lens as the oil lamp with if nor the body show the finest speck of soot from ever having been used.




The body is a mess, probably done to make it look old and battered intentionally. The strut attachment points on top are all over the place, but once I disassemble it I think I can fudge them back to parallel and true before paint.







Since I feel too punky for wood work, I think I'm going to work on disassembling the lamp now...

Oh, and just look at those door pulls! I love them!

[Elvis Gump]

Well it was shorter work than I thought to get the chimney and inner snout out than I thought, took longer to find a Dremel and propane torch. So I cut that away and placed the two pieces of the weather cap in position. Must devise a way to clamp the up for brazing solder to afix them permanently together.


Taller overall look than I like, but I will have to see once I get the fresnel out and adjust the struts.

[galacticprobe]

It's not really a bad-looking lamp, Elvis. Even the original (Series 5-7a) anchor-style lamp was a bit on the crooked side. (There are plenty of photos in the Reference Section under the 2010 TARDIS, and the Lamp sub-board in the TARDIS Workshop Section showing it leaning a bit.) In any case I have no doubt that you'll set your lamp right once you get stuck in.

And as a fellow allergy sufferer, yes; those little "pinkies" you take to combat allergies that knock your butt out are diphenhydramine (a.k.a. Benadryl, or as my wife calls them, "'dryls"). Trying to counteract them with coffee will only give you the feeling of having been up for close to 24 hours and not being able to sleep when you want to. (It's a losing battle, as you've found out.)

I've been on allergy shots steadily since 1994. I get two shots in each arm every week (to go along with my other ails). It's a good thing I'm taking those because I can't take the 'dryls anymore: found that out the hard way a few years ago when I had to go on these pain meds for the nerve pain in my back, leg, and foot. There's this thing no one warned me about at the time: drug interaction. Taking 'dryls with the pain meds I'm on causes "severe central nervous system suppression"... meaning certain autonomic reflexes (like breathing!) don't get the signals to keep your diaphragm moving! I took some 'dryls for a sinus headache one night a few days after my second back surgery (April 2010) because I'd had to stop my shots while I was waiting for the surgery (couldn't get to the naval hospital for the shots) and then at home recovering (hence the sinus headache). I suddenly found myself having to concentrate to keep my breathing reflex going! That's when I learned about that interaction - looked it up on line, and then spent the next five hours (from 11pm to 4am) playing on line while also trying to keep my diaphragm moving, while fighting off the knockout FX of the 'dryls. Talk about multitasking!

I finally went to sleep when I felt the 'dryls had worn off and my breathing reflex was back to normal. Cut that one a little too close; any closer and TARDIS Builders would have gotten a solemn post from the wife (or widow) saying that I was no more. Scary crap, that!

Now get some rest!

Dino.

[Elvis Gump]

Having taken most of the day off - it's my birthday, I went to work on the lamp again. If I had to, I guess I could use the body of this lamp, but its so flimsy and badly made I think all I can really comfortably use is the lens which is good. I'm thinking what I'm going to do is glue up some PVC board and try to lathe a new bottom and top to more closely match the Smith/Capaldi housing. It will be easier than trying to do metal work and I can probably recycle the struts to use with it. It's 6-3/4" in diameter which my wood lathe can handle,so it will be an experiment I've thought of trying for a few other things. This will allow me to make the top and base a bit squatter like the real thing and then attach the garden lamp top more securely.


Got torrential rain and bad storms coming tomorrow though Friday, plus work until Sat so I probably won't get back to this until Sunday...

[davidnagel]

Yay! Dremel time!

plus Happy Birthday!

[Bob's your Uncle]

If only I had a wood lathe. My workshop would be complete and I would never have to go home again.
oh, wait.....food. 


Can't wait for photos.
Greg.

[Volpone]

That looks like it should be about right.  I'm very low-tech.  Stick some putty on the struts and just push the new top down onto it and call it good.  Shame to chop up such a beautiful brass lamp, but the things we do in the name of art...

[Elvis Gump]

If only I had a wood lathe. My workshop would be complete and I would never have to go home again.
oh, wait.....food. 


Can't wait for photos.
Greg.

What I have is the Harbor Freight 8"x12" wood lathe that retails new for around $130 though I found mine in a salvage shop for $25 because it was missing parts that I was able to get after-market or fabricate. I'd like to have a larger one, but for now it's serviceable for most of the things I've used it for.

[Elvis Gump]

That looks like it should be about right.  I'm very low-tech.  Stick some putty on the struts and just push the new top down onto it and call it good.  Shame to chop up such a beautiful brass lamp, but the things we do in the name of art...

Once I got over the excitement of having it here finally, the truth is it's not all that beautiful. As best I can guess, it looks like the product of one of the slum sweatshops where an inexperienced crafts-person basically tried to make a knock-off 'antique' looking lamp to go with a vintage fresnel lens. Nothing is straight, plumb or true or consistent in the construction of it. It wasn't even well eyeballed in how they chose to put the struts on.

The thing is in photos I've looked at and price range it was the closest to the look and size of the real lamp available right now. The seller still has one available, but what I got wasn't what was pictured in the eBay listing comparing the photos to mine, probably that was the very best one he had but very critical inspection of those photos make it clear that even the pictured version has many of the same problems and inconsistent construction as mine. But for the price, after also pricing fresnel lens along without a lamp it's still a pretty good bargain.

There's a couple of clearly better made commercially available lamps out there, many don't have a true fresnel lens and aren't quite as large to work correctly. Even that Massive version used on the promo TARDISes isn't really a great match.

If you carefully observe the TARDIS prop lamp the ratio of the lens diameter to body diameter is very close to the same. On most lamps the lens is much smaller than the body diameter making them appear to be very 'inset' compared to the prop. The Massive New Haven used on the promo TARDISes is unusual in that it's fresnel diameter is larger than the body, something I've never seen on naval-used fresnel lamps and lanterns.

I must have looked at 200+ different lamps via Google images, Amazon, eBay, etsy and other sites and can't find a one that is close the one that was sourced for the actual prop. Being that Cardiff and indeed all of the UK has a huge culture of naval ships that probably isn't surprising. There's probably a near infinite amount of companies making such lamps and lanterns over just the last century all over Europe so unless you had the name of the manufacturer off the prop lamp, you probably couldn't begin to happen on another one by chance.

And many of them are outrageously priced, many wanting hundreds or thousands of dollars for them as antiques for decor use. Emailing several salvage places and asking nicely I got incredibly curt replies when asking about seconds or say ones missing the chimney parts as all I need is a serviceable main body and fresnel sans any oil lamp or electrics inside. Again I can't fault them, they are trying to make the most money they can off of them, but sometimes they were very curt and unfriendly about it. A rule of thumb is always be friendly in retail because you never know when you are going to piss of the wrong person! Working in a hardware and tools store in the last couple of years, I find that a lot of customers come in with odd questions for projects that are as off-beat as building a TARDIS, so helping them with suggestions or demonstrating that YouTube and Google have a wealth of how-to videos so you don't wind-up reinventing the wheel while dreaming up ways to do things it makes for happier customers. I have many carpenter customers who do amazing work, far beyond what I've ever dreamed of doing, and still they admit they have 'dumb questions' and come in with them. It's amazing how many people never think of using YouTube or Google!

I have a plan to try to either use PVC drain pipe and fittings in that 6-3/4"diameter or larger or glue up PVC board to turn a top and bottom body on the lathe. The latter is probably the most likely and I have a source of PVC biscuits to join boards to do that for turning. O think that will allow me to closely match a made body to my lens that will more closely resemble the prop lamp. But it's all uncharted territory, by no means do I know I can pull that off, but it's the fun of giving something crazy a shot that's what the whole project has been for me.

It's not so much a plan as a Thing. I'm going to do a Thing and hope it works. Respect the Thing!

[Elvis Gump]

Okay, I can't believe my luck and I think this will work. I thought I'd probably have to do a cut and glue up to make a PVC top and bottom to turn to make a new fake top and bottom for my top light. What are the odds that a PVC fitting would turn out to be the 6-3/4" diameter I need right? Next to nil. Well turns out the thin wall coupling and reducer Lowe's carries item #182570 6"- 4" reducer and straight 6" coupler have and outside diameter of 6-3/4"! When I compare to my brass lamp body there's just the slightest, but acceptable difference.

My lens has a slight inset at the top/bottoms of 5-1/8" and an outside diameter of about 5-3/4 giving me a roughly 1" inset from the outside diameter of the "body" which seems to be a tad more inset than the prop lamp which I reckon to be more of a half inch difference, but close enough. I'll reduce the height a bit of each coupler to make the overall lamp a little more squat so it more closely matches the prop as well. I'll just have to eyeball that.

So here's just the reducer with the lens

What I think I can do with the new chuck I have coming from Harbor Freight is turn most of the 4" coupler part away and keep a bit of the 45° slope and make a groove for the lens to sit in. I'll need another reducer like it for the top. Each reducer is like $7.43 so its a dirt cheap way to fake a body for the lens that will be 100% straight and plumb as can be. If you can ring just a fresnel this might help you fake a lantern body too

I thought I had some PVC board scraps, which I can't find inside the shop. There's a hell of a maelstrom of rain and wind right now going on outside - I got over here from the house during a break and I'm waiting for another so I don't take a bath getting back to the house. The scrap board will help me make a top and bottom that I can attach the coupler to the roof inset and the lid onto the top and I'll probably source a brass hinge and tab-over clasp like the prop to open to change the bulb. If you remember "The Power of Three" Matt is shown with the top lamp hinged open at the beginning of the episode.

Okay, got back in the house where I had the top lantern cap and the overhang is still good to go. I'm excited to get started, but I don't want to have to transit house to shop and back with what is going on outside right now!

[galacticprobe]

Elvis, that is brilliant. I mean really brilliant! You've just given me an idea for what to do with that Fresnel lens I've been toting around with me since 1983! Now I can try to build a lamp for it that closely resembles the Series 5-7a lamp. I can have it sitting on the coffee table and just tell everyone "My TARDIS exploded, and this is the only piece I've been able to find so far!"

Dino.

[Elvis Gump]

After a whole lot of messy turning here and there over the past week or so I've finally gotten my PVC housing turned on the lathe.

First thing was turn "bases" top and bottom for the body sections
]
The body sections made from PVC adapters were too "tall" as is so I snugged them on the bases ands parted them off and discarded the rest leaving me with...

Some tuning, sanding and attaching the bars after paint and wiring, but the hard part done!

Now walls and roof...

[galacticprobe]

Well, maybe it's just me, but I'd say you did a smashing great job on that lamp housing! I can't wait to see it with the struts added to it (and of course, the blue paint job).

Dino.