K9 Diaries - Build Reboot

As mentioned before there were a few abortive attempts to build K9, so when we were at the Silk Mill Museum in 2016, we were mixing with the Makers group and my wife Debs got to talking to Chris Symes who knew of the local Doctor Who group. Debs asked how you went about getting involved, - I think she was trying to find a way to motivate the build progress in hindsight. So Chris put me in touch with Steve Hatcher, who organises Whooverville in Derby, and I suggested that I could bring my K9 to the next Whooverville in 2017. This was perfect as there was plenty of time to complete the build and have time for commissioning and testing 😆

With this in mind I gathered all the K9 materials I'd collected over the years previous 9 years and began to mull over this cunning plan.

Whooverville 9, 2nd September 2017

I began by reviewing the model of the  body shell that I'd produced way back in 2007/8, so that I could produce drawings of the bits I'd need to cut out of MDF.


Back then I'd got as far as cutting bits of plywood for the body, but stalled when I realised that I would need to fill the grain in the wood, it seemed like a lot of hard work and I wasn't sure what to fill it with?

So it was one step backwards, but with lessons learnt, and this time I would use MDF to construct the pattern of the body.

So, with a new urgency the plans were turned into dimensioned drawings. Then the material was sourced from a local building supplies company and a few days in the garage with my trusty ruler, some pencils and a saw, K9's body pattern began to take shape.

For those that are keen to build a K9 of their own, there are friendly people online on forums such as Who Props, with knowledge and some plans that have been collected together, by those that have gone before. I had collected the plans I acquired years ago and made good use of them.

I couldn't resist taping together the MDF parts to get a sense of K9 coming together.

Whilst I was at the building supplies I had noticed a product called bendy MDF, which looked like it might be perfect for the top of the body.

I have seen other people glue in lot of strips of wood and then sand them to shape, but this would just form a nice contour with minimal effort


Of course this isn't going to be the final body of K9 as even with decent glue and fixing I don't believe it would hold up to the vibrations and occasional "Star Cruiser Crashed" moments, so it is the plug for the mould which I'm making, for the body which will be fibreglass.

K9's head was made a good few years ago and has been skulking around in various places from the loft to the garage to my projects room, (or as Debs calls it the junk room 😛 ) before the project was rebooted and I decided I'd better get on with it or I'd never finish it.