re: My New Series Dr Who Tardis Build (image heavy)
I'm leaning toward weathering the Tardis to look like the Eccleston and Tennent boxes were done, but using the Smith paint, which means a bit of a hybrid that I didn't expect to end up with.
This partly comes from my choice of #2 spruce for the wood, which I believe is the same as the Eccleston and Tennent boxes were made from, judging by this photo of the Eccleston prop under construction. (At least, I'm told that's which one it is)
Note it does appear to be made from the same type and quality of wood I'm using. Interestingly, my wood came right from Home Depot but is marked as sourced from Sweden.
Overall photo of mine:
This prop was heavily weathered in a process that wears away the soft part of the wood, leaving the harder portions standing very proud. In a soft wood like pine or spruce, this is pretty easy to do. A member of the Tardis Builders Group that has had some official involvement in Tardises described the process, and there are a couple photos below of it.
Essentially, the finished Tardis was subjected to a propane torch, basically burning the surface, which has the effect of making the soft portion of the wood easy to remove with a wire brush, creating the highly contrasting grain surface seen on the prop.
I have been planning to weather mine in this manner as well, though something about the finish on the Smith Tardis had been bugging me that I couldn't resolve. When I started my build I was in a discussion about which wood the Smith Tardis was made from. To my eye, it's clearly an open grain wood, something really only found in a common hardwood, like oak or ash. This is not a grain pattern you'd ever find in pine or spruce. I was advised it was not built from oak or ash, and I set it aside and went with spruce.
As I've been building, a couple friends in the commercial woodworking world have had interest and I've shown them Smith reference photos, to which they have both said it could not be soft wood, and is most likely white oak. Which would make sense to me even cost-wise, as knot free (clear) common white oak is no more expensive than difficult to source clear spruce. IE, I can buy the oak at Home Depot, but clear spruce is only available at commercial cabinet lumber suppliers and expensive.
Here's a photo of the promo Smith Tardis at the BBC from last year.
So, I find myself with a Smith design, built from Eccleston / Tennent wood, wood that I think needs to be weathered or it will look terrible when painted. A bit of a hybrid either way I go it seems.
So, coming to this point in the last few days, I decided to test weathering the wood an easier way than burning and wire brushing. I tried out a sample using my blast cabinet with glass bead media loaded in it. It worked very fast and very well. Actually, almost too well, but I think if I go this way I can control the effectiveness of it by limiting pressure .
Here's the sample. I like the effect. It's hard to photograph and show it well, but you can see where I put a bit of tape across the board to distinguish treated and untreated surface.
I'm hoping it warms up a bit here by the end of the week as my next step will be to test using an outdoor blasting rig to see if I can control the weathering. If that works, I plan to move it outside and weather it assembled.
