The Reason
As you are probably wondering, why on earth (or beyond) would anyone build a custom case in the shape of a tardis?
To this question there are only two proper answers. Firstly, because i can. Secondly, because of this little machine:
With a machine like this in my computer room, i needed to have a case that would fit in its surroundings, so i ended up thinking about building my own tardis (from the classic Dr. Who series) pretty quickly.
In the course of the past 27 seasons the series' tardis exterior changed quite much, so i tried to design a blend of all different versions.
The Idea
I started off with a bunch of sketches, which ended up in a simple 3D-design
Technical drawing (PDF - front)
De uitwerking
As the original police boxes the tardis was based on were made of cast iron, i ran into a problem right away. There was no way i would be able to make one from cast iron myself. Luckily, the later seasons came to the rescue, and featured a tardis made out of wood. This made the first step on the road to get this project finished.
So i walked over to the store for a decently sized collection of wood.
Firstly i started preparing the base of the case.
The next thing to do was to fit the corner pillars in to place. The four posts will ensure the structural integrity of the entire case, so proper fitting was important.
Testfitting the walls to check for any errors in measurement.
After the walls were tesfitted, i started with preparing the walls itself. Not only did it mean sawing a LOT of small pieces of wood, but also i faced the difficulty of glueing them in the right place one by one.
After i finished the basis for the first wall, the tardis actually started to take shape.
The walls are fastened to the pillars by using small bearers normally used for holding shelves up. The front of the case isn't glued to them, since it'll need to be removable to be able to work at the insides.
After attaching the four walls, and making the holes for the windows and grates for the ariflow it's starting to look mor eand more like the tardis.
Being finished with the lower part of the case for now, i started on the top part. Since i wanted to be able to detach it at all times, it needed to be an accurate fit. To make the two parts seemingly fit together seamlessly, i added a flexible layer between the two.
After a few days of relaxing, i made the signs that are on the top side of the tardis.
Next i added the LEDs behind the signs. Since i generally pretty much suck at soldering, this was the single most dreaded part of the entire mod.
After a few days thinking on a way to finish up the roof, and several attempts using different materials, i settled once again on wood....
With the following result.
For the next step, i applied two base layers of ground on the case.
After the base paint dried, i applied two layers of dark blue paint and added the grates and windows to the case.
After the paint dried, the gruesome process of adding the window details, with 8 seperate windows requiring 16 individual pieces cut to measure each, this took a lot of time and patience. It was woirth all the effort though.
Which after painting made the case look like this:
That's it for now, i'm a lot further along on the case already, so i'll update the worklog as soon as possible.