My original idea was to do a bit of a joke photo essay to do with woodwork. Start with a tree, use much machinery, and end up with toothpicks. Not sure if the joke got through. The challenge with this shoot was to be both photographer and subject. Juggling a camera remote and high speed power tools not quite OHS. At least I wasn’t planking.
I’ve just changed domain registry & servers. Will be back up running soon with more TARDIS (and other life) progress. Meanwhile, have a giggle at what software support inadvertantly did to a work computer…
Who’d have thought a bunch of windows could be so difficult? I’d mocked up a prototype of the 2x 6 pane window frames for each panel way way back before I’d even had the body structure built thinking that this would be an easy thing to do, put aside, & resume. How wrong I was!
I tried a number of designs including mortise and tenon & bridle joints and in the end setttled for the half notches (not actually a join, but a fit). The main reason was ease (relatively speaking) of construction however, the joins will then be bonded. Probably use brads and glue.
I trenched some grooves in the prototype and had some glass panes made up at Essendon Glass. The glazier didn’t give me grief when I said I was building a TARDIS so kudos to him! Richard & Leon (TAFE teachers) pointed out with that design the glass may break whist final clamping, so in the new design I’ll rebate in some grooves that the panes can be fitted after the frames are complete.
So, it’s taken 2 weeks of jig making & calculations on the panel saw so that I can exactly and precisely reproduce 56 sticks of timber with precise grooves for fitting. As they say, it’s all in the preparation. I spent the last hour after arvo smoko to complete the corner joins on the 24 horizontal bars. Also made some spares just in case…
A blustery wet day was scheduled for our class’s photoshoot down at the Breakwater in Warrnambool. Wet miserable days are not a natural fit for going outside, but I’d have to say that I had a heap of fun.
I think having the gear around took the concentration off myself, so that instead of worrying that fingers were losing circulation, I was more worried about keeping the seaspray away from my D300s. And instead of worrying about my head getting wet, I was worried about rain getting on my D300s. And instead of worrying about hypothermia, I was worried about using the last of my bodyheat to keep the battery of my D300s warm enough to keep shooting.
Paranoia comes from a lifetime of destryoing cameras by dropping them in the ocean, leaving them on the sandy beachtowel, and other such unrecoverable abuses. The D300s bears my deathgrip.
One thing I especially appreciated was having half a dozen other shooters there with gear so that I didn’t quite feel the photodork. Other than raindrops on the lensfilter, and smears from me trying to clean the raindrops off the lensfilter, I got a few decent shots. I think. I used Shutter priority and slowed the speed down through the meter until the aperture got down to around f22. Tripod and cable release of course.
The interesting thing about this particular construction is that there are actually two different styles of skill involved. There is the gross structure, the pillars, walls & doors which in retrospect weren’t too hard. Then there is the finer fiddly stuff. As Leon, one of the TAFE teachers said: “You can spend a week building a house, but then spend 4 months fitting it out”.
The roof is attached, albeit temporarily as I’ll remove it back to ground level to putty some cutting defects and paint. The roof lamp box took two weeks of fiddly work. I’ve managed to source some glass panes so the next challenge is upskilling to some glazing.
