My Grandad and I have a long history of making things. A space rocket, castle, lots of model railway sheds and stations, even a cut-out clock which took ten years to make and never worked. Everything was always made out of cardboard until it came to the Dalek.

We knew this was going to involve wood, sawing, drilling, nailing, even fibreglass for the head and polystyrene or papier mache for the balls.

It was also going to need a grasp of applied trigonometry worthy of Carol Vorderman as the whole thing had to be rescaled because full-sized Daleks don't fit through normal house internal doors. Every angle of the tapering bottom section would have to be recalculated.

In addition it was going to incur the wrath of my Grandma who would have to put up with all this going on around her every Sunday afternoon.

We built the Dalek from the bottom upwards. The first section took a very long time because of all the recalculation and because it involves twelve wooden panels all nailed onto a frame. Each panel has to be exactly the right size and angles for it all to fit together properly. The panels are real wood, I can't remember where from, and the frame is made out of hardboard.

At this time, we had a lot of hardboard which was salvaged from the doors at home which were being replaced at the time.

The next section up is the middle part of the Dalek where the vertical struts fit and where the gun and arm are fitted. This involved making another frame similar to the bottom one, which was to be cladded with thin plywood. We couldn't find any plywood which was flexible enough so I went out and bought a sheet of very thin material which was a shiny white on one side. I can't remember what it was exactly but I do remember, very vividly, that it had a tendency to crack when you put nails into it.