Whilst there, I took a little time to have a look at the other materials on offer and as a result came to a decision to change my primary building material, and use untreated pine instead of the pressure treated variety.
Now, I didn't undertake this decision lightly, as right near the beginning of this blog I outlined my choices (pressure treated pine, cedar, and a combination of the two) and as you will notice, untreated pine is not amongst them.
Well, things change!
As a result of my experiences making the base, I learned that the pressure treated pine is not as "dimensionally" accurate as I'd hoped it would (ironic that a TARDIS needs to be dimensionally accurate!).
In Lowes today, I looked at the standard pine lumber and could clearly see that each piece was much, much more regular in every way than the pressure treated pine. Also, it has a far better natural finish, which should make my job a lot easier when it comes to sanding and painting etc.
I did look at the cedar too, but Lowes has a very small selection of sizes of cedar boards and those it does have are quite unfinished too.
Therefore, untreated pine it is from this point on.
Now, obviously, one of the reason for choosing the treated stuff in the first place was its resistance to the elements and to things like termites and mildew. I'm losing this in-built protection by shifting to normal pine, so now I'm going to have to worry more about treating the wood against the elements and anything else that would attack it. However, I think I will save an awful lot of time and energy in the construction phase, so this is a small price to pay.
The second thing that happened at Lowes today was that I decided to significantly alter the way my TARDIS roof is constructed. In my original "instructions", it calls for essentially 3 square frames, each slightly smaller than the previous one, to be built up which are then fitted into each other a bit like telescoping car aerial to form 3 elevations. This part of the plan I'm sticking with, but the next stage involves the supports for the sloping roof pieces. In the instructions, it advises making a pair of interlocking cross beams which are then tapered for the roof panels and fitted inside the aforementioned roof frames (the very inner one) across the diagonals.
I've two issues with this approach:
- It is going to be very heavy
- It is going to be quite hard for someone with as little experience as myself to create these interlocking beams accurately.
Therefore, I've decided to forego the approach taken in the instructions, and I'm going to create a simple frame to support the roof panels which will fit inside the inner most roof section. I believe this will be easier for me to make, and easier to "adjust" if it turns out that I've not been accurate enough.
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