Call this number now

The K6 restoration continues (see phone box category or follow from the original post). Carl has now restored the replacement roof – here’s a photo walkthrough of him fitting it (more about Carl and the restoration business at his website).

Mine's the grey one in the corner - primed and welded.

Moving the box into place.

Higher...

..and higher...

...and higher still...

Carl manouvres the roof into place.

On it goes...

A snug fit!

And here's the view from inside - the cable channel for the ceiling light.

Tears on my pillar

Carl writes…

Fortunately the broken section of transom rail was with the kiosk when ‘Kelly the Crane’ brought it over [from Derbyshire] to Norfolk. It was the missing piece of the jigsaw & fit perfectly; however it had to be thoroughly stripped of paint & rust before I could could ‘operate’!

After buzzing a ‘36′ pad over the broken section & grinding a ‘V’ in both this & the structural transom rail I was ready to re-align. In order to aid perfect alignment of the section when welding, I drilled a hole through the broken section & the corner pillar. The broken section’s hole was enlarged & countersunk. The hole in the corner pillar’s top was threaded with a 5/16 Whitworth ‘taper tap’. A countersunk steel screw was nipped tight between the sections prior to welding. This screw will remain in situ & be coated with body filler creating the correct aesthetics.

After welding, the ‘36′ pad was used to ‘dress’ the weld; this ensures the weld trail is flush to the surrounding surfaces.

Oh no! A bit missing!

Hang on, what’s this bit of broken iron I’ve found in the back of the transport truck…

It fits! Would you Adam ‘n Eve it?!

Grind the paint off…

Tap and die job. Looks like we need a Whitworth 5/16th taper tap here.

The bolt!

The hole!

Beautiful flush fitting.

But it will need welding to be fully invisible.

“I’m melting!”

I’ll see you burn…

Stuck on you.

Because you’re so smooth

On top of the world!

Can you fill me in?

For those following the studio blog, it will be back soon. There’s a community project coming up in mid-Sept relating to the Widcombe song, and Howard is soon going to be back to fit my wall plates in the next week or so (the only current sound leakage from the live room is from the cable hole in the wall!). For now, here are some more visual treats for phone box restoration fans!

Kerris fills the casting imperfections around the 'Telephone' sign frame area.

Kerris (one of Carl’s phone box restoration team at Remember When UK) has been back filling all of the casting imperfections. She has also begun ‘prepping’ the roof for paintwork pre-installation (you may recall the roof is actually a replacement one – see previous post). Carl has now loaded the K6 back on to the GPO trailer (an authentic 1930s antique itself) getting it ready for welding. It’s easier welding a horizontal surface, he tells me.

I’m now getting to the stage when I need to decide what to do with this thing when it’s finished. People use them as garden ornaments, but I’m really really tempted to put a proper phone in it – just seems kinda the right thing to do. In an age of mobiles and Wi-Fi, having a landline in the garden seems wonderfully obtuse. But on the other hand I’m not sure I’d want people leaping my garden fence in the middle of the night to make phone calls – although a lock on the door also seems against the philosophy of the thing. Am I being paranoid? Has telecommunications become such a cheap commodity that phone phreaks no longer exist?

You’ve never seen a phone box from this angle before…

The K6 on Carl’s authentic 1930s GPO trailer.

My K6 horizontal on the trailer. A queue of phone boxes in various stages of repair stands behind.

GPO trolley from the other side – note the two mini wheels on the front.

The trolleys tilted so a single GPO installer could put the K6s in place unaided.

Fully upright.

Yes – even Carl’s workshop is 1930s retro…

Imperfections in the roof casting being sanded out.

Kerris fills the casting imperfections around the ‘Telephone’ sign frame area.

The damage done

The original K6 on arrival at 'kiosk hospital' - note the damaged roof.

You’ll recall that the roof was damaged. Carl has found a replacement unit – here’s an excerpt from his latest email;

…with the old damaged roof free from the K6 it was an ideal time to ensure the replacement was exact. This replacement salvaged roof was from an old K6 that was originally located at a local racecourse (Fakenham).

The last picture shows both ‘lids’ being compared.

Here’s a photo walkthrough of the removal of the roof, followed by a picture of Carl comparing the old and replacement domes. Note the cable run in the casting – I’m hoping my K6 will light up the word ‘Telephone’ in all its 1930s glory!

Hello dolly

Carl writes…

With the hole now drilled in the roof it was necessary to remove the 2 ton clasp on the block & tackle to expose the chain link. This granted additional height to remove the domed roof. The chain was then bolted to the roof. Making sure the old bolts securing the dome were free, I carefully positioned the kiosk directly under the gantry, thanks to my ‘dolly skids’. These ’skids’ allow me to move a K6, weighing 750 kgs, with ease on flat smooth ground. With a few grasps at the load chain the damaged roof was lifted clear of the transom rails, to which the roof section was pulled clear of the K6 on the gantry. The K6 was then pushed clear of the beamed gantry.

On the roof it’s peaceful as can be

Superman costume just out of shot...

Back to the phone box story. Carl at Remember When UK has started work again on my K6 (for the full story click the ‘Red Telephone Box‘ category on the right, or go back to the first post. Helpfully, Carl’s emails are practically a blog entry in themselves, so I’m going to paste some of his commentary in here.

[Carl wrote] The roof section is heavy & awkward & as the old GPO papers stipulate, two to three persons, tressles & scaffolding are required for fitting or removal of the dome panel. Fortunately the aid of the kiosk gantry eliminated [the need for] all but one person (me!) and no scaffolding in sight – by boring an 8 mm hole in the centre of the damaged roof.

8mm hole bored in the top of the roof to enable its removal

Superman costume just out of shot…

London Calling…

K6 mobile telephone box

My K6 is still in progress at Carl’s workshop (click the red telephone box category on the right or read the original blog post about this). Here’s a new product from Remember When UK that caught my eye. There are so many levels of postmodernism in this phone that it makes my head hurt…

K6 in a mobile phone

Excerpt from Remember When website below.

How about this neat little number!

Modelled on our classic K6 Red Telephone Box, this impressive fully functional mobile phone is a real winner. It features a 65k colour TFT screen, camera, full SMS and MMS functionality, polyphonic ringtones, and GPRS/WAP 2.0. You can set your wallpaper to display one of fifteen different iconic images from old Blighty, plus you can select from Rule Brittania, God Save the Queen, or one of twenty other ringtone melodies. London Calling measures 102mm by 43mm by 21 mm, and weighs approximately 100 grams. As an unlocked GSM phone, all you have to do is plug in your current Orange, T-Mobile, Virgin or Cingular SIM card and start talking.

The London Calling mobile phone comes with the phone, travel charger, battery and the Getting Started guide. Additional accessories will also become available include a serial data cable, handsfree headset, and additional batteries and chargers. The London Calling mobile phone comes with a 90 day manufacturer’s limited warranty against defects.

Features of the phone include:

It is an unlocked tri-band GSM phone which will work in the UK, US and throughout Europe. Comes with pre-programmed ringtones including Rule Britannia and God Save the Queen.

Additional features include assorted wallpaper images of noted British landmarks. Perfect if you are traveling abroad to different countries.

For more information, or how to place an order, please contact us.

Living in a box

This man will not appear in my blog very often.

Just a quick post today from the phone, to try out the excellent wordpress for iPhone app. I had a meeting on Wednesday in London at the Institute of Musical Research. It’s a group called the UK Popular Musicologists’ Collocquium and represents an all-too-rare chance for (popular) music staff from different universities to get together and discuss academic articles and analysis relating to popular musicology. There are about eight of us the meetings, which are chaired/organised by Allan Moore (editor of Popular Music Journal), and we get together every six months or so in Guildford or at the IMR (any musicologists reading this, do feel free to get in touch with Allan if you’re interested in becoming involved). I’ve made a basic WordPress/edublogs site so we can collect together study materials and YouTube links – UKPMC site.

This meeting’s theme was discussion and analysis relating to a particular track – Prince’s ‘When Doves Cry’. It is a fascinating song (noted for its lack of bass line) in that it appears to be based on one eight-bar chord loop – Am  | G   |  G   | Am   | Am  | G   | G   | E7  Am | – but is actually based on a four-bar loop that is only actually stated halfway through the track  – | Am  | Dm/A  | G   | E7+5/G#  E7/G# |  (hey, this stuff keeps me awake at night).

Like any multi-million-selling song, it’s always interesting to note just how well-constructed it is – and to make inferences about why it was so successful. It seems to obey most of the general ‘rules’ of songwriting (lots of primary and secondary hooks, lots of monosyllables, effective lyric imagery, economical use of language, clear meaning, unusual title) while deliberately challenging them in other ways (relentless/repetitive chord loop, quirky rock-funk guitar solo intro followed by guitar-less arrangement, slightly mad lyric lines “animals strike curious poses”, classical extended mono-synth outro). Prince, for me, is like Bono or Sting – however smug or irritating they might seem as people, you have to admire the sheer talent at work.

And, as a bonus, while walking past Hyde Park I got to see five K6s all together. If you’re unsure why I have become such a phonebox geek you need to read this previous post. After which you may still be unsure.

Five K6s near Hyde Park. Model A, 1936, if I'm not mistaken.

Stripped

Carl has now sandblasted the phone box, removing all the paint and returning it to its original casting state. I learn that this K6 was cast in 1935 at the Saracen Foundry in Glasgow – as shown in the casting lettering on the back. The lid is cracked and is going to be replaced, but in every other respect it’s come up good as new – take a look at the way the sandblasting has revealed the crisp detail of the casting on the Tudor crown.

Here's the K6 immediately after sandblasting - back to the bare cast iron

Here's the tudor crown after primer has been applied - not a speck of rust!

The sandblasting and priming has shown more clearly the cracked roof, which is to be replaced.

Here, you can see the original 1930s GPO trailer on which Carl transports his K6s

Open the door, get on the floor…

The phone box arrived in Norfolk at Carl’s kiosk hospital last week. First step – take the door off fully, and drill out the concrete floor, exposing the whole of the cast iron frame ready for sandblasting. Apparently they come up good as new, even down to the detail of the original symbolic Tudor crown (replaced in 1952 at the Queen’s behest with a more contemporary one). The domed roof is probably past saving, so Carl is planning on replacing it with a reclaimed one from another K6.

In a previous post I marveled at the detail of the original 1950s K6 install instructions (and the devotion of whoever typed it in to get it online). But Carl was, of course, way ahead of me – I feel very much like an ‘apprentice anorak’ in this world. He has a huge archive of K6-related documentation, some of scanned from the original 50-year-old paperwork. It’s an impressive archive. http://www.redtelephonebox.com/archive/

The original K6 on arrival at ‘kiosk hospital’ – note the damaged roof.

Blogging editorial note – I’m blogging four concurrent stories at the moment – the phone box, the studio build, the guitar book and the Widcombe song. To follow these as individual threads, use the ‘categories’ on the right hand sidebar – here they are as links.

• Red telephone box category
• Garage to studio category
• Songwriting category
• Guitar books category