Back in the USSR.... ok, UK I mean!

I probably should've posted this earlier, but progress has come to a screaming halt because I'm now back in the UK until mid-March.

Before I left though, I did manage to complete two of the side walls for the TARDIS, leaving me just the following:

• Last side wall

• Doors

• Frames for windows on side walls and doors

• Light boxes

• Lamp fitting

• Signage

• Final prep and painting

Really there isn't that much left to do now as the vast bulk of the construction is now complete - if I'd been a little more proactive in Nov/Dec, it would be complete by now!

C'est la vie!

"An' here I go again on my own: Goin' down the only road I've ever known: Like a drifter I was born to walk alone"

Whitesnake - lyric from Here I go again

"One man can make a difference, Michael"

From Knight Rider 

Two quotes today to make up for none on the last post!

Anyway, Back again!

So, where was I! Oh yes, the construction.

This was an awful lot of hard work for one man on his own - it really is a two man job, but I'm currently in a gang of one so I had to make do with me, myself, and I.

Essentially, I had to prop the roof section up so that I could attach two of the corner posts to the bottom of it. Once this was done I then had to flip the whole assembly (risking the whole thing splitting and falling apart) to attach the other two. This doesn't sound like much, but believe me it was physically knackering, and I kept hearing various parts of  the assembly creaking as it strained under its own weight - with another strong pair of hands I'd have been able to support the assembly much better when moving it around, but to cut a long story short, I got it done.

Once I'd done this,  the next step was to fit the base to the corner posts. In the original "plans" I had, the builder cut L shaped holes in the base with a jigsaw and slotted the corner posts into the base. However, he'd used a single sheet of ply and I'd used several "floor boards", so I decided to take off some of the boards so I could fit the posts and then I'd cut the boards to fit.

Well, this was an awful lot of hard work for one man on his own 

So, you can see here that I've now got a strange horizontal gazebo!

For the record, here's a bit more detail of the "joins".

Can you see the mistake here? Think before you drill that's all I'll say on this one!

Anyway, having done this, I've been filling the various holes to cover the ends of the screws and coach bolts, but then I had to put the remaining floor boards back on, and to do that, I really needed the TARDIS vertical!

So, today, I took a trip down to Home Depot to try and buy some kind of "dolly" that I could put the TARDIS on so that I could wheel it about. Sadly, they had none in stock, but I did find something better that I'll document in another post. 

Using these items, I got the TARDIS out of the garage and "erected"! 

"Look at my mighty erection!"

Dave Fox, today

As it happens, cutting the floorboards to fit was childs play for an old hand at the table saw like myself. I won't bore you with the details, so I'll cut to the eye candy.

Note for all the nit pickers here!

1. The colour is a base coat - not the final colour

2. The ground here isn't level, so if it looks like the TARDIS is on the piss, it's the ground.... mostly.... I expect!

Some more detailed pics for the record!

Note the little bits of 3/4" square dowel I've used here to level up the floor boards where they were short around the corner posts!

Now that's craftsmanship for you! ;)

Laters....

I was going to find another quote on time, but since I've already used two I thought I'd omit the quote today!

Anyway, it's been a long time since I rapped at ya on the Type 40 Project!

I can give all sorts of reasons as to why nothing much has been happening, and most of them would be true, but to be honest the real reason is fear laced with a little laziness!

Fear, because the next step had to be the assembly of the basic frame from the components I'd already made, and there was every chance this was going to be a disaster. You see, it's really a two man job to get this all assembled, and I'm currently in a gang of one. I was worried that in trying to put it all together on my own I was going to end up stressing some of the wood and ending up with a pile of firewood.

Well, today marks two weeks and a day before we have to return to the UK (boo hoo! sniff!). I could no longer afford to procrastinate, so I took a trip out to Lowes to buy the carriage bolts I needed to put the thing together.

Now, the problem here is it's been about 3 weeks since I last did any work of note on the TARDIS, so I've already fallen into bad habits. Today, I just guessed at the length of the both I'd need, and when looking at them at Lowes I decided that a 5" bolt (3/8" diameter) would do.

Well, when I got it all back, I found that I was really about 1.5" too long, but having just forked out over $15 I wasn't going to let that deter me. So, I started assembling it with my overlong bolts with the view that I'd chop off the excess amount if necessary.

Second bad habit came up, shortly after I'd started. You see most of my power tools are 18V cordless. Now, I've two batteries, but since last working on the TARDIS I'd neglected to put either of them on charge. It didn't take much drilling and bolt cutting to end up with two depleted batteries and not a lot of work done. It also occurred to be that I'd bought too few carriage bolts since I bought a bag of 15, figuring I'd need 8+, but it turned out that I'd need at least double that just to bolt the corner posts to the roof so I was already 1 bolt down.

So, a trip back to Lowes was needed to spend 76 cents on just one carriage bolt.

Anyway, I'm running out of time here now as I have to go out for dinner, so I'll continue this story with the next post!

"Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things"

Edgar Degas, French Artist, 1834-1917

Well Mr Degas, you may well be greatly respected, but I can most definitely assure you that you are talking out of your arse here!

I started off not knowing what I was doing, so therefore I should've immediately proceeded to great things, but that didn't happen!

I've been priming my construction to date with some oil-based primer that I'd had tinted blue. I bought a spray gun specifically to assist with the painting, since I thought it would provide better results and be much faster.

Well, I was wrong on both counts!

You see, I need decent thick coats of primer on my woodwork to, so that it helps weather proof the TARDIS by providing a strong base and filling in any cracks in the construction that I'd missed with filler so aid in waterproofing the thing.

Unfortunately, my spray gun is better suited to light, delicate, coats which is not at all what I wanted.

So, whilst I've "primed" the wood now, I can see that I need to go over it again, and I'm pretty certain if I use the spray gun, even more layers will be required.

So, it looks like I'm going to resort to a trusty paint brush because that will allow me to layer on more paint in less coats.

"Be Prepared..."

Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouts, 1857-1941


Again, I've not been here for a while! It seems that I've got a little too hung up on preparation, and not hung up enough on progress!

Allow me to explain.

Since last week. I've been out and bought the following

• Sandpaper
• Spray Gun
• Oil-based primer, tinted blue
• Face mask (don't want to be poisoned by my wood preserver)

amongst other things anyway.

In the meantime, I've been doing little things with the TARDIS itself. Filling, sanding, filling, sanding again.

I also took some time to try and seal some of the gaps using this expanding foam stuff that is so truly horrible to use, I've vowed never to use it again! This stuff is so damn sticky, if you get some on your hands it takes quite literally hours to remove it - and that's despite using any solvent I could lay my hands on (and generally they stuck to it too!).

Anyway, after what seemed like the upteenth time of filling and sanding, I had an epiphany!

This is a TARDIS. It is supposed to look like an aging police box. Aging police boxes don't have nice smooth surfaces - they will be dented, bashed, smashed in places, dirty etc, etc,etc.

All this time, I've been striving for a perfection that I not only find impossible to achieve, it is wholly inappropriate for it to be that "perfect" anyway. More fool me!

Anyway, today I stopped with the filling and sanding of the roof, and sprayed it liberally with wood preserver. I still need to do the corner posts too, but I'd already filled them a bit more today, so that will have to wait for another day - and another sanding!

The roof is drying as we speak, but sods law it's not as warm today as it has been for the past few days so it isn't being helped along much at the moment by the Florida weather.

Once it is dry, and the corner posts have received the same treatment, it will be time to apply the primer. This will hopefully provide a long lasting weather proof coating, but only time will tell! I guess that I need at least a couple of decent coats, so this is going to take me through to the middle/end of next week I expect before I can get any more real construction work done. That's the trouble with the oil-based paints - they take that much longer to dry, but I think they're more durable.

EDIT: Wtf? Do I know anything about paint? No I don't! So how do I know that an oil-based one is more durable??? It's all just speculation!

So little to do, so little time!

"Time goes by so slowly"

Madonna, from the song "Hung up"

I've one word to say to you Madge - sloblock! (Hint - it's an anagram!)

Today I had occasion to visit that temple to the DIY gods that is Lowes of Highway 19 in Spring Hill. All I needed was a single 8 ft length of 4x1, but today the gods were definitely against me since every single piece they had was flawed! Frankly I'm amazed that I managed to get 7 decent pieces out 8 the last time I visited, as they'd clearly restocked but most of it was in pretty poor shape!

Still, not to be outdone, I purchased the least offensive piece and then had to pop to Walmart with the missus to pick up just a couple of items.

Well, the Walmart time dilation effect occurred, and before I knew it we'd be gone from home for over an hour and a half. When we did eventually get back, I set to work straight away (foregoing a beer I had previously promised myself) finishing off the last of my corner posts.

"Its hard to love a man whose legs are bent and paralysed"

Kenny Rogers, from the song Ruby

I wouldn't know about that Kenny, but I can tell you it's very hard to love a piece of lumber that was as bent and twisted as the one I wrestled with today!

What should have been the work of about 15 minutes actually ended up taking over an hour (mortal wound not withstanding!) because the piece of lumber I'd bought from Lowes just refused to behave when I was trying to attach it to the corner post. Given that this piece was far less bent and twisted than the one I bought it to replace, I can only thank the Great Maker that I had enough sense not to even try with the earlier piece!

Anyway, eventually I had the corner post pretty much assembled and looking not too shabby considering the warped evilness that part of it was fashioned from. Personally, I consider this a plot by dark forces to prevent me from completing my work, but I am not so easily deterred!

It was during this struggle that I received my first real injury of this project. Surely now that I've suffered for my art, I shall be admitted to the ranks of all the Great Masters, but I'm sure they'd have let me in anyway even if I hadn't suffered greviously!

Anyway, back my injury! With the plethora of power tools at my disposal it is easy to imagine how I might have removed a limb or severed an artery, but despite the danger posed by these tools I fell victim to a humble hammer. Basically, I hit the end of my thumb with the hammer whist tacking a quadrant to my corner post. It hurt, and a blood blister formed, so I'm surprised I'm here to tell the tale, but i was not going to let a life threatening injury put me off my work, so a few colourful expletives later I was once again at the chalkface of my endeavour!

Just as I was about to lay the corner post up with the others, I realized that I still had to make some little "blocks" to fill in the gaps at the top on *all* of the posts that I'd made. Fortunately, this was swift work and during the process I had occasion to thank my lucky stars for the table saw again!

Naturally, I measuring up the space before cutting my blocks, but some of them was just a tad too big to fit in the gaps and even a mighty hammer blow from Mjöllnir, the Hammer of the Norse God Thor, would not be able to knock them into place. However, it is frankly amazing how small a sliver of wood I could use the table saw to cut off when cutting these blocks to fit - we are talking half a millimetre or less - all that it requires is a steady hand and a good eye, of which I had both at my disposal thanks largely to the fact that I'd already foregone the beer I'd promised myself.

Anyway, about 30 minutes later, all the blocks were in, and I'd even managed to pin punch the tacks on the quadrants ready for filling tomorrow.

Just as I decided to call it quits for the day, a Fedex truck turned up bearing my wood preserver that I ordered last week. Hurrah! Well, mostly hurrah - turns out I didn't order quite as much as I'd envisaged - I hope it's enough!

Anyway, to cut a long story long, I didn't seem to achieve much today before time ran out, but as Roy Walker would say "I'm back in play" - ok, he'd say "You're back in play" but you get the drift!

A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an
occasional animal, and the common cold

Ogden Nash, 1902 - 1971

In my last post I made a comment about it seem like an age since I last wrote this post, but that I had not been idle!

Well - this time, it is an age and yes, I have been idle!

I am still waiting on my wood preserver to turn up, this is true, and I have been filling and sanding my roof assembly some more so now it is "ready" for action.

However, my final corner post still remains incomplete, so really I'm not a whole lot further ahead than I was last Friday, but 4 days have passed - including a weekend which is shameful!

In my defence, I've been suffering from a cold for the past few days, and at the weekend spent most of the day doing "family" things, such as visiting Tampa Zoo on Saturday and Pine Island Beach on Sunday.

Today though, the work begins again in earnest! Today, even if my wood preserver doesn't turn up I shall reignite the engines of progress for the sake of humanity! Who knows if that sky diving llama isn't lurking above, waiting to drop? I cannot put off the Great Work any longer.

One thing I did achieve is to purchase a replica "phone" from Ebay which will hopefully fit in the little phone cupboard on the TARDIS. Obviously it hasn't arrived yet, and I hope it will be small enough to fit on the door to the cupboard (as it should), though I'm prepared to mount it internally if necessary. Apparently it is fully operational, which gives me pause for thought as to some interesting possibilities......