Well, it's all getting down to the real nitty gritty now. The door handles, heat shrink and power/reset switches all arrived this week so I now have all the final parts of this TARDIS build under my control. I think. First things first I had to finish painting it, and 3 coats later it was done. The pic below is only 2 coats, and you can still clearly see some brush marks.
Next up were the door handles. I bought these from a doll's house shop. I never realised there was such a market for so many tiny little things, but then I'd imagine that dolls house builders are not aware of the case modding scene so it's swings and roundabouts. Anyhoo, As they were so small (pic 1) I used a pair of tweezers to hold the nails in place as I hit them with my hammer. Sadly, the hammer was too big as when I was bashing the nails nearest to the handle, the handle bent. Luckily I'd bought 2 spare handles for just such an occasion and they were not so swiftly replace and now one nail top and bottom holds them in place. It took about half an hour to get them in, but they damn good if I say so myself. I also glued the lock into place.
Electrickery
I've never really understood electronics, so wiring the insides of the TARDIS was out of the question (I had enough to do without learning a new subject) so I kept with my plan of dismantling an illuminated fan. Two of the LEDs popped out reasonably easily, so I extended the wiring attached to these hoping to route the illumination into a suitable position within the case. I spent ages trying to position the LEDs so the front sign would get even illumination with no shadows. Unfortunately, with the position of the DVD drive this is all but impossible. If I put the LEDs directly behind the sign you get a big white spot and no light in the middle, if put the light in the middle you get the reverse.While I was testing this I managed to stop one of the LEDs from working, so now I'm left with 1 LED on a long piece of wire, and 2 stuck firmly into their holders. I might give up on illuminating the signs.
I also wired up the new power and reset switch. I nicked the connectors off an old case and cut it to length. However, as I took too many attempts to strip the end (I was using a pair of pliers) it was too short, so I patched it up and locked it into place. The white tubes you can see in the first pic is heat shrink. As the name suggests, you put this over a heat source and it shrinks, sealing the joint I've made. The LCD screen was hot glued next to it. The LCD screen is vertical, rather than horizontal due to the width of the gap in the door. I was going to have the hard drive and activity LED behind the door as well, but didn't think they'd add that much.
During my recent bout of painting, I covered a sheet of OHP film in white primer. There were cut into to shape and hot glued into place as the windows. Below is a rear shot of the windows.
