Day 122 - Project Continues

Post date: Jul 29, 2013 12:17:57 AM

Maybe numbering these entries by day is a bad idea. At first, it was a good motivator to keep me moving, but some major events has pushed this to the back burner. 

So yesterday, I spent a few hours on the project again. I needed to cut the door out of one side of the Tardis. This will serve as the front door. I couldn't find my razor saw, so I tried with an exacto knife. However, the craft plywood was extremely difficult to cut and there was a constant risk of cutting outside the line. So I picked up a new razor saw: shown below.

Note the angle of the handle. This is not the ideal way to use the saw. The saw worked much better (didn't bind in the grove as much and moved smoother) when the handle is parallel to the wood. The saw will be on a slight up angle from the handle, but things move much smoother.

In order to cut the corner square, because the saw doesn't cut perpendicular, here you can use the exacto knife and a light tool as a hammer to help push the blade through.  

The top of the door frame can't be done with the saw. I used the knife to cut along the top of the frame many, many times; and did more of the hammering technique. Eventually though, I discovered that if I heavily (emphasizing the heavily) scored both sides of the top of the frame with the knife, I could cleanly snap the door free. 

Perhaps one could try a dremel tool, I was close to digging mine out, but it requires a very steady hand.

If you blow the picture up, you'll see some scoring mistakes. This is why the saw is worth the $10. On the upside, this scoring will be covered by balsa wood and so mistakes will be covered. This craft plywood base is for strength, only part that really shows is the inset part of the door panels.

I also marked the inside of the door (using the grain pattern to make sure I had the right side, "Door Inside." I can just see myself throwing it away thinking it is scrap. I didn't mark the outside (or both sides) because the indentation from the pencil could show up in the final product.

The final thing I did before packing it in yesterday, was to add the first balsa piece to each of the sides. I picked the header piece that runs from between the top of the Tardis and the top of the "doors." I learned to always got back to the plans for the measurements. I initially misjudged the width because this time the plywood panels were already beveled. Hence, if I made it just the width of the panel, there would be gaps when I joined the sides together. I also haven't remembered my gluing technique yet, so some of the pieces were giving me a hard time and I can't remember how to efficiently hold the pieces together so the glue sets while I continue working; I fear last time I held each piece in place for several minutes while it set.