Well, i've been a lurker on this board for a while now, and really admired a lot of the stuff people have been able to make.
In the past i made a few bits and bobs, mainly model conversions, figure painting and the like, but 3 years ago I had a nastly bike crash, and lost the use of an arm & leg, among other injuries and stuff. Since then i've not been able to manage with my old hobbies.
Anyway, with the new Dr Who series my son (8 yrs), has been nagging me for ages to buy him a tardis, and I thought I might be able to make him one for his room.
After lots of research, and looking at plans and stuff, I decided that building a full size one was just too much for me to manage on my own, but had the idea that if i removed his bedroom door I could make a replica tardis door to fit in it's place.
It's taken me weeks as I can only manage about 15 mins work at a time, and had to have help with all the lifting and moving.
I realise it's not properley to scale, but that just wasn't possible, as his door frame was much narrower and taller than the real tardis, so it all had to be adjusted to fit.
If anyone's interested, it's made from inch thick MDF, cut to size, and then I fitted the Pine to the front of the doors, scorched it with a heat gun, and then wire brushed it to raise the grain.
The phone door was cut out & hinged.
The windows were cut out, and I used sandblasted lexan for the glass.
The phone door sign is a sheet of aluminium, which was sandblasted and then dremelled round the edges for the weathering.
It was painted with Oxford Blue gloss from B and Q, and the door handles were from B and Q and Homebase.
I struggled to find a 40mm Yale lock, so I bought a 60mm Yale, and then found a 40mm unbranded one at Wilkos, so i swapped out the barrel and key, so from the outside it looks like a Yale.
When it came to the telephone I really struggled to find the exact one, and prices on ebay were crazy for anything even remotely wooden and old. Call me mean but I wasn't paying £50 or £60 for a tatty antique phone to go on an 8 year old's door and probably get wrecked!!
In the end I found a very similar phone on ebay, but it was metal, very tatty & had no earpiece. But it only cost a tenner.
Once I'd cleaned it up, and polished the brass it didn't look too bad, and I was able to turn an earpiece on my lathe that looked fairly authentic looking. I'm still hoping to get some proper old phone cable to connect the earpiece to the phone, at the moment it's using old speaker cable. I also need a way to hang the earpiece on the hanger. Any ideas?
The tardis frame is built to slide into the existing doorway, without any permanent fixings, so when he's too old, or we come to sell up, it can be removed, and only leave a couple of small screw holes in the jambs.
For the light at the top I used yellow cold cathode tubes, as there isn;t much space between the perspex sheet and the wall behind. There's a small switch on the left hand side of the door frame to turn it on and off.
It looks like the light bleeds through the lettering in the pictures, but it's just the way the camera has taken the picture.
I was going to get all the lettering printed by my friend on his vinyl machine, but he kept letting me down, and after several excuses I did it myself.
The Police Box lettering was printed out on a computer, then traced over some very thick black card, and cut out. I then sandwiched the card between 2 sheets of sandblasted lexan, and it works pretty well. The light is pretty bright even in daylight.
The phone door lettering was more of a problem. I printed out the lettering just as I wanted it to appear, then scored through the paper onto the aluminium with a sharp knife. Then I cleaned up the letters and hand painted them - all those years painting warhammer figures with 0000 paintbrushes finally paid of...
Despite all the inaccuracies and 'artistic licensce' i've taken I suppose the deciding factor as to wether it's any good or not lies with my son. All I can say is in the last 2 weeks since it went up we've had more of his friends, their brothers (& sisters), their mums, aunties, grandpa's and dogs, round to visit, than ever before, & I've had a few disgruntled dads ringing me up asking me how I did it.
Thanks for reading this long winded diatribe, please be gentle with me, it's my first time...
(sorry if the pics are the wrong size or don;t appear, not really sure what I'm doing)
Al
In the past i made a few bits and bobs, mainly model conversions, figure painting and the like, but 3 years ago I had a nastly bike crash, and lost the use of an arm & leg, among other injuries and stuff. Since then i've not been able to manage with my old hobbies.
Anyway, with the new Dr Who series my son (8 yrs), has been nagging me for ages to buy him a tardis, and I thought I might be able to make him one for his room.
After lots of research, and looking at plans and stuff, I decided that building a full size one was just too much for me to manage on my own, but had the idea that if i removed his bedroom door I could make a replica tardis door to fit in it's place.
It's taken me weeks as I can only manage about 15 mins work at a time, and had to have help with all the lifting and moving.
I realise it's not properley to scale, but that just wasn't possible, as his door frame was much narrower and taller than the real tardis, so it all had to be adjusted to fit.
If anyone's interested, it's made from inch thick MDF, cut to size, and then I fitted the Pine to the front of the doors, scorched it with a heat gun, and then wire brushed it to raise the grain.
The phone door was cut out & hinged.
The windows were cut out, and I used sandblasted lexan for the glass.
The phone door sign is a sheet of aluminium, which was sandblasted and then dremelled round the edges for the weathering.
It was painted with Oxford Blue gloss from B and Q, and the door handles were from B and Q and Homebase.
I struggled to find a 40mm Yale lock, so I bought a 60mm Yale, and then found a 40mm unbranded one at Wilkos, so i swapped out the barrel and key, so from the outside it looks like a Yale.
When it came to the telephone I really struggled to find the exact one, and prices on ebay were crazy for anything even remotely wooden and old. Call me mean but I wasn't paying £50 or £60 for a tatty antique phone to go on an 8 year old's door and probably get wrecked!!
In the end I found a very similar phone on ebay, but it was metal, very tatty & had no earpiece. But it only cost a tenner.
Once I'd cleaned it up, and polished the brass it didn't look too bad, and I was able to turn an earpiece on my lathe that looked fairly authentic looking. I'm still hoping to get some proper old phone cable to connect the earpiece to the phone, at the moment it's using old speaker cable. I also need a way to hang the earpiece on the hanger. Any ideas?
The tardis frame is built to slide into the existing doorway, without any permanent fixings, so when he's too old, or we come to sell up, it can be removed, and only leave a couple of small screw holes in the jambs.
For the light at the top I used yellow cold cathode tubes, as there isn;t much space between the perspex sheet and the wall behind. There's a small switch on the left hand side of the door frame to turn it on and off.
It looks like the light bleeds through the lettering in the pictures, but it's just the way the camera has taken the picture.
I was going to get all the lettering printed by my friend on his vinyl machine, but he kept letting me down, and after several excuses I did it myself.
The Police Box lettering was printed out on a computer, then traced over some very thick black card, and cut out. I then sandwiched the card between 2 sheets of sandblasted lexan, and it works pretty well. The light is pretty bright even in daylight.
The phone door lettering was more of a problem. I printed out the lettering just as I wanted it to appear, then scored through the paper onto the aluminium with a sharp knife. Then I cleaned up the letters and hand painted them - all those years painting warhammer figures with 0000 paintbrushes finally paid of...
Despite all the inaccuracies and 'artistic licensce' i've taken I suppose the deciding factor as to wether it's any good or not lies with my son. All I can say is in the last 2 weeks since it went up we've had more of his friends, their brothers (& sisters), their mums, aunties, grandpa's and dogs, round to visit, than ever before, & I've had a few disgruntled dads ringing me up asking me how I did it.
Thanks for reading this long winded diatribe, please be gentle with me, it's my first time...
(sorry if the pics are the wrong size or don;t appear, not really sure what I'm doing)
Al
