Scarfwearer's "Where will you put it?" Tardis

[Scarfwearer]

The window frames on the Yardley-Jones are not in the same plane as the panels - they're brought slightly forward. So it's the glass that's in the same plane as the panels. The frames are in front.
(With the prop being moulded from fibreglass from an original wooden buck there is some logic to why they might have done this: rather than cutting out the window hole, they'd just attach the window bars directly onto the window panel and mould from that. Much easier and stronger.)

When I built the TYJ parts originally I had a plan to mount the window frames through the gap with a flange behind so that they are removable. The problem with this (which I didn't really think through at the time) is that because of the beveled edges, the window frames will either have a gap around them, or would have to be attachable somehow from the outside. Also, if the fit isn't correct to within a millimetre, the gap will show horribly. Well, my joinery isn't generally that good, so I've had a rethink.
I decided to router out the back of the flange to reduce the thickness of the wall around the window frame, so I can use my usual technique of mounting the window frames behind the rails and stiles.

The thing with a router is that it's about as maneuverable as a shopping trolley, so it's important to have its motion constrained so it can't wander all over the place.
Here's the wall lying face down with a guide rail clamped to it.

I had to put the guide in six positions. Each flange had to be nibbled away in 3-4 passes - routers don't like cutting too much at once.
That's an awful lot of clamping and unclamping - even with the quick clamps.
It might actually have been easier to disassemble the walls completely and run the rails through the table saw.

I'm not Computer-Numerically-Controlled, so my routering is not very tidy.


But with a little sanding, it does the job.


I also cut out the remaining window frames and installed them temporarily. The white 'glass' is just scraps of foam core.


You can see how the door windows are the wrong depth compared to the walls.
I have a different plan for those...

[Scarfwearer]

Fourteen months whoosh by...

... now where was I?

Oh, yes, the depth of the windows in the doors needs correction. But not quite yet.

For most of the last year this mostly-finished build has been standing in a dark workshop.
It's barely been touched, and certainly no progress has been made. Until today it's looked exactly as it was in the February 2019 update above.
Here it is:


The box-section metal roof of the workshop has a ridge piece across the top, but the gaps ventilate the roof. And because there's a tree nearby there's a steady rain of needles, or catkins (or whatever they are) that fall on the roof and blow in when it's windy. So my stuff gets slowly showered with vegetation...
I have a plan, but this is the sight that greeted me today:

The stuff's everywhere, but I have a vacuum.

Junior Scarfwearer has been working from home, so we've managed to spend some time tidying and organising the workshop, so it is possible to walk in there again now without falling over. All the scattered Tardis parts got stacked in the new build, so I spent some time pulling them out and refreshing my memory about where I'd got to.

I've remounted the left sign box, which appears to fit. The steps on the rear sign box needed adjusting because of the changes I made to the post profile after Mike Verta's research.


I also mounted the hinges for the rear doors, and mounted the rear sign box as well.


So a good first step at getting going again.

Lots of things still don't fit very well - notably some of the end caps on the sign boxes.

I cut all the window frames before, but they still need proper mounts.

And of course I still need to do something about the depth of those front windows, and make up more of the
interchangeable parts for the variant versions of the box.

It doesn't seem there's that much to do. But I never thought it would be on hold for this long...

[russellsuthern]

Great to see you back building!!

Can't wait to see more!

Regards,


Russell

[moonbeam]

Looking forward to seeing more of this, picked up plenty of ideas reading your posts, thanks.

[Scarfwearer]

I noted earlier that the frames of the windows in the doors were at the wrong depth for a Yardley-Jones.
For the walls, I routered the rails and stiles to allow the windows to sit at the right depth, but for the doors I have not done this.
The reason is that I want to use these doors for the Altered Newbery, for which doors were produced that looked quite like the Yardley-Jones ones. But those doors had very different windows: not only were they set at the depth I currently have mine, but the frames were also a lot thicker wood. Most of the classic props have window frames that are around 1/4 inch thick. The Altered Newbery windows look more like half an inch. Really very chunky.

So as a first step, I've cut some Altered Newbery like window frames:


They didn't come out as well as I hoped, and I'm quite likely to have another go at them: I used the same techniques I've regularly used for my windows, but I think the extra material thickness has made it hard to do the finish work as accurately. I'm now thinking they probably did them with a router, so at some point I'll try that. I'll keep these just in case Lalla Ward ever comes to visit.

Pressing on, I've come up with a plan for how to mount two kinds of windows at two different depths in the same doors:

(Yardley-Jones on the left, Altered Newbery on the right.)
The idea is to make them reversible (okay, so I've done that before).
To make them sit at a different depth, I first trimmed the TYJ-style frames so they're just the right size to sit in the beveled opening without having gaps or falling through. This needed a lot of iterative trimming of millimetre widths:


I glued some tiny stand-offs onto the back to make room for the glass in the sandwich, and attached the thick frames to the back.


Here's a partially-dismantled door showing how it fits:


So the next part is to figure out how to get the frames in and out, as clearly they're pretty much locked in there when the door is assembled.

One of the challenges with the Newbery is that the handles and locks had several different positions over the life of the prop. So I made the door stiles detachable, so I could install alternatives.
One side or the other is always blank, so I only need to store one stile that's not being used at any given time. The central divider is also swappable.

For the TYJ, the same issue arises. In fact this prop and it's later sister(s) had a bewildering variety of handle and lock positions - at least four that I can count just on the front doors. At least two other slight variations occur on the back doors.

So I'm doing the same door-stile swapping on this variant:


I've used my last plank of inch-thick wood for a swappable stile having the handle and lock on the right. The one it replaces can move to the left door. They're held on with M8 bolts, nuts and wingnuts.
I took a look to see what I had in the workshop:


Only 9 short ones. I need 12 for the 3 stiles to begin with. More if I do all four variants.
I cut a few long bolts to size for now, as the hardware shop is closed for the duration.


I recessed the bolt and nut on both sides of the stile, and later covered the outside with wood filler to hide it. The protruding end goes through the panel and is wingnutted on the inside of the door.
In the picture above, I use a piece of scrap wood to ensure the bolt head is recessed enough.

So this door-stile changeover provides the opportunity to change the window frame:

Here the assembly slides in with the Yardley Jones look outward.


Here's the back of the door, but with the assembly flipped around between these two shots.
I added an L-shaped frame (in cross-section) to hold the thicker frame against the opening when it's reversed to show the Altered Newbery style window - as here.

Here's how it looks from the front in Yardley-Jones style:


And here it is with the Altered Newbery style window:


I've also made another central divider - this one without a handle - which attaches to the left door.
So here, then, is a shot with a later Yardley-Jones arrangement having the right-hand door open:


Hopefully not too long now before I can bring it all together.

[Rassilons Rod]

I am amazed that this level of dismantle-ability isn't more visible when fully assembled! Amazing work!!!

[Scarfwearer]

I mentioned I was planning to do some better windows for the Altered Newbery doors.
Here's the story.

First up, my router table was not up to the job - it's metal, some of the bolts have worked loose from vibration, and amazingly don't have lock nuts to stop that happening. It's also small and shaky and usually In The Way.

So I decided to mount my router directly into the workbench. This involved jigsawing through 2.5 inches of MDF surface, with a blade that wasn't long enough, so there was a lot of fiddling about trying to find ways to finish the job. But I got there in the end. I routed the top plate down into the surface, so it lies flush.
Here's the result:


The wooden frame screwed over it to the bench is the next part - a jig to hold the window.
With some careful planning and positioning, I made the jig exactly as much larger than the frame as a single pane opening is large, so that with the jig clamped to the bench in the right place, the frame can move only where the router should cut.


Alas I hadn't quite thought this through enough: the jig needs to be larger by the distance the router moves, which is not the same as the size of the pane opening, but less by the diameter of the router bit. So this happened:


I went ahead and finished that window frame anyway, just to test the rest of the plan. But that one will get thrown away.

I rotated and flipped the wood to do the four corner windows, then moved the jig to do the two middle ones.
Here's a comparison of the result: old on the left, new on the right.

It may not look hugely different, but is much more obvious close up or in person:


So I think it was worth the effort.

Unfortunately by the end, I think the router bit was pretty much blunt!


But a little sanding took care of the mess.

Here they are mounted:

[superrichi1a]

That really is genius, and what an impressive result! It makes me shudder to remember how much of an uphill struggle building my windows was, but you've definitely aced this one

[Scarfwearer]

Cheers!

It would probably have been easier with a smaller-diameter router bit, but I wanted to get the radius visible in the corners in the Altered Newbery photos.
I would guess that they probably clamped the jig to the door and moved the router, rather than what I did.
I'm also guessing they used MDF, as there's no grain or tearing damage visible in the photos.
Unfortunately I don't have and can't get MDF right now, and I'm short on good PPE. And probably couldn't get that either.

[tony farrell]

I would guess that they probably clamped the jig to the door and moved the router, rather than what I did.

That  makes perfect sense.

I'm also guessing they used MDF, as there's no grain or tearing damage visible in the photos.

Interesting. The (provisional) BBC plans we have here on TB for the Newbery Box specify "Hardboard" for the recessed panels 'backing boards'. Mark Barton Hill's genuine Newbery top-sign is made from Hardboard...

I built my Dalek from both hardboard ("shoulder section's" curved bits - i.e., if you treat it gently, hardboard bends) and MDF (the "skirt's" angled panels) and I can't really say that either material behaves differently when cut and/or sanded to a finish.

I've also used 'bendy MDF' on mine and Fivefingeredstyre's central column bases.

So, Crispin, I'm genuinely curious as to why - from the photos - you think that the window frames were MDF and not hardboard?

T

[Scarfwearer]

It's only the windows of the replacement doors seen in Castrovalva and Black Orchid that look different to me.
The frames seem to be about half an inch deep, rather than the usual thin hardboard, and I've been assuming that they just cut the window holes in a thicker-than-usual door panel sheet. But it's just a guess.
It's pretty visible here:
http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?action=dlattach;k=549;topic=8499.0;attach=119055;image
It's possible that the frames are indeed hardboard and that the cobex/glass is set back some distance from them, so what I'm seeing is actually the shadow of the frames on the cobex. If the sheet those doors were made from was thicker than the window frames they might have attached the frames to the back of the stiles and rails, and a larger piece of cobex across the back of the door, leaving a gap between the frames and the cobex. I can't tell from the photos whether what I'm seeing is a shadow, or the cut edge of the frames.
If the door panel sheet is also hardboard on these doors, I think the cobex would have to have been mounted on a separator frame to explain the apparent depth, which would be odd, though possible.

[Rassilons Rod]

I'd never really clocked how deep the panels (and the windows) are on these doors... It's REALLY noticeable in this photo.

But it certainly looks like the windows start at the same depth as the panel backs - I don't think it's a huge leap to assume that the backing board and the window cut outs are the same material (or cast from... I'm not going to hazard a guess about fibreglass or wood, I'll leave that to someone better qualified)

[tony farrell]

It's only the windows of the replacement doors seen in Castrovalva and Black Orchid that look different to me.
The frames seem to be about half an inch deep, rather than the usual thin hardboard, and I've been assuming that they just cut the window holes in a thicker-than-usual door panel sheet. But it's just a guess.

Ah, sorry I get what you mean now. Shadows and reflections really can play havoc with what we think we see!

Do these help?



(Open images in a separate tab and use the 'magnifying glass' to see them at full size.)

To me, the replacement doors' window frames and muntins look to be approx a quarter of an inch thick (6 mm) with the rest being shadow and reflection. The original side panel's window frame appears to be much thinner say an eighth of an inch (3 mm) but, that's just how I perceive it.

One little detail is however clear - the Newbery Box had lost the second step above the doors in Black Orchid, only for it to be re-added for her Longleat '83 outing!  

T

[Rassilons Rod]

Those poor sign boxes

[Rassilons Rod]

Great pictures as usual Tony

Interesting to note the L Bracket on the front face of the front right corner pillar.

And something on the base....