Scarfwearer's Second TARDIS

[Scarfwearer]

Well, the gallery for this build is posted, and the build has moved to its resting place in the doorway, so I guess I'm largely finished with it.
There are still a few details left undone, as there always are: a blue door sign, a blue lamp housing, the dome cap for the top, altering the top sign font... So this may not be the last update.

I wanted to document a few 'project post-mortem' style comments, about what worked well and what didn't.

• Using screws rather than glue worked well, and as it turned out was much needed. I changed my mind about a lot of things during the course of the build, both dimensionally and structurally. As things fluctuated I was often able to re-used pieces of timber than were cut too small, so there was less waste than the churn might imply.
  
  
• The lift-off hinges work even better than loose pin hinges - even on the PTO door. I would definitely do that again, though you have to allow clearance of half the hinge height for the lifting. In practice this was not a problem - just lift the door off when it's fully open.
  
  
• I think the adjustable sign boxes have too many loose parts. I'm thinking about attaching the end plates, end trim and end stops together, and doubling up the end plates that are currently shared. As it is I have a box to keep the bits in. The reversible rails seem to work well.
  
  
• The combination of sliding parts and layers of paint were an issue, as expected, but manageable. I ended up sanding and respraying some parts as they were tight enough when bare wood that they wouldn't fit even with only spray paint on them. This mostly affected the plugs for replaceable parts on the doors.
  
  
• I changed the way I did the roof extenders so that they have L-shape cross-section and have the original roof sitting on them. This mimics the way the roof was borrowed from the original prop, retaining the top plate of the next step down. The problem is that because they are loose, the roof can slide around, and it's difficult to get them all flush against it without pushing another of the four extensions out of position. They probably need dowel plugs underneath.
  
  
• The recessed bolts I use to hold the doors closed were a pain because they have to be mounted in the edges of the doors, which are a sandwich of plywood and planks, so the screws straddle the layers awkwardly.
  
  
• I had to remake the sliding panels behind the pull-to-open doors because they were too thick to slide with paint on them. As the core of the door is 12mm ply, I glued two sheets of 5mm ply together to total 10mm, giving 2mm of play for the paint thickness. With minimal texturing this seems to have been enough.
  
  
• Originally I had most of the bolts and wingnuts go through carefully positioned holes. But as my ideas about the dimensions shifted, I eventually cut most of these into slots so I could open or close the width to whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. The downside is that even at 8mm (M8), the wingnuts are too small to tighten really well by hand, so the build is hard to tighten up enough that gaps don't open when I don't want them to.
  
  
• I wasn't able to make all the parts reversible so that everything could be stored inside the prop. The base is particularly bulky. With some more thought it might be possible to do better.
  
  
• I did pretty much achieve the objective of being able to reconfigure the box without tools. If I was built like a basketball player I could probably do it with just me and the build, but as it is I need a short step ladder.
  

I've posted up the workshop plans I evolved during the course of the build:
http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=7686
http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=7795
These are the two versions for the two major variants. For the later 'Altered' build, I've drawn what's essentially the final form of the prop, as the variants in between are largely progressive failures of symmetry. Separate plans as Tony did would be clearer, but would also have been a nightmare to maintain on the go.

I said when I started that I would try to keep the receipts and figure out what the build cost. I mostly succeeded, though there are a few small bits of hardware that I can't account for.

The TTI (Total Tardis Investment) for this build is about £1200, which was about what I was expecting. I could have done it for a bit less with fewer changes of mind (I have a small stack of 3/4" quadrants that I took off again). But for that I get two Tardises! Albeit only one at a time (so is that a time-share?

One thing I did want to show concerns the paint colour and lighting:

This photo has only been adjusted for brightness. It's lit from two sides by the two fluorescent tubes in the garage, an old one on the left, a newer whiter one on the right. I noticed this in person and managed to capture it with a photo. I did wonder whether I'd made some terrible error with the paint, but carried a spare part around the build and watched it visibly change hue as I did so! Amazing! You've probably seen from the gallery that outside it looks completely different again!
The effect of lighting on the apparent colour of paint is well known, but it's interesting to see it made so obvious.

[maddavros]

In its current state (not a criticism btw) the box reminds me of the photo of the original where it was surrounded by monsters and the greatly missed Robert Holmes!

[Volpone]

Yup, we could just save that picture for the next time someone asks what color blue to use and say "it doesn't matter, because it will look how ever it wants to."  We've had more than a few examples of a TARDIS changing color from one photo to the next--even when taken seconds apart, but I think this may be the first time we've had a TARDIS look two different colors of blue at the same time! 

[boxman550]

these box's are awesome do you have a gallery of them all? and gotta ask you said you had a misses whats her thoughts on these

[Scarfwearer]

Well I put up a Gallery of the build in its two major configurations here: http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=7781 but I haven't made a gallery of the detailed progression. I'll try to get to that sometime soon.

Mrs Scarfwearer and the junior scarfwearers have all been very supportive. We're all DW fans, and I'm sure I couldn't do it without them.