Progress, progress

Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity

Tor Heyerdahl, Builder of Kon-Tiki and Ra II amongst other things

Todays task was simple. Finish off the corner post I'd already made by gluing just the one remaining quadrant to it, and then go buy the materials for the other 3 posts and build them too.
Sadly, progress today was very slow for a plethora of reasons, but mostly keeping the missus happy!

So, in the end all I managed was to finish off the one corner post which took a shade under 5 minutes. In fact, it took longer to take the photos on this post than it did to do the work today. Hopefully tomorrow will prove to be more productive!



Anyway, onto the construction of the corner post.



Essentially, the main part of the corner post is two lengths of 6x1 cut to 99" long, which are

then joined together against one long edge using some 1" square down which is glued and screw to the edge of one of the lengths of lumber, and then glued and screwed to the edge of the other piece so that the two lengths for a right angle, but they only actually "touch" each other at the diagonal - i.e. no surface on the two lengths of lumber actually touches the other except at the very corner.

This was surprisingly easy to achieve by fixing the dowel to the first edge and the supporting the other piece with some equal width offcuts whilst it is also fixed to the dowel.

One this is done, two pieces of 3x1 cut to a shorter length (93.5"), are screwed and glued to the inside of each of the two sides of the corner post so that about an inch protrudes out from behind the corner post. This lumber is shorter than the main lengths of the corner post because these will "stop" at the base of the TARDIS, whereas the longer two will fit through "slots" in the base (which have yet to be cut!) and then bolted to the base itself.

Finally, where the edges of the wood are exposed on the outside of the corner post, quadrants of 0.75 lumber are glued and pinned to "round" of the edges of the corner posts. Hopefully, this will be clear in the pictures!

Here's a shot of the very top of the corner post shown from the "inside". Putting this picture up has made me realised that I haven't actually finished this corner post yet! I still need to fill in the area at the very top of the post with some small pieces of lumber to "seal" the end of the corner post from the elements, errhhh I mean the time eddys in the space time vortex!

You can also see here the two pieces of 3x1 screwed to the outer edges of the 6x1, and the 1" dowel that joins the 6x1s together. You can also see where the cursed 3x1 split slightly as I put in the last screw!

Here's a shot of the very bottom of the corner post from the outside. You can see here how the two wide lengths of wood are joined at the corner and how the quadrant in the middle does not extend all the way down the corner post. The section underneath the pencil line you see here will fit into two slots in the base and will be where the corner post and base are fixed together.

A side view of the corner post, showing the quadrant attached to the "edge" of the corner post. There's an identical one the other side.

Here's the completed (well, almost) corner post stood up outside the garage so you can get an idea of the scale. Bear in mind that the top of lamp at the very top of the TARDIS will be another 12" or so above this, so we're talking a total height of some 9 feet for this beast!