Wednesday, September 08, 2010 08:07

Archive for the ‘Prop Building’ Category

Labor Day

Monday, September 6th, 2010

Today I did the exact opposite of what one does on Labor Day.  I pretended to be a carpenter.  Cross one more prop off the (current) list as I managed to complete the Stocks today.

The stocks double as a place for one of my buckies to be in my torture scene as well as a photo op site.  The empty side of the stocks will be for ToTs to pose for photos with the talking bucky.

Stocks

Stocks

Spider Scene:

  • Finish Spider Egg Sacs
  • Build one new webbed up victim

Torture Scene:

  • Build a Rack
  • Build a Wheel
  • Build a Chair
  • Build Stocks

Misc Stuff:

  • Repair the Skeletal Organist’s mechanism
  • Assess older props and repair as needed

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Torture Chair

Monday, September 6th, 2010

I spent all day yesterday building the torture chair!  It is 99.9% done.  The only thing left to do is install the spikes (I ordered a bunch on eBay and they should be here next week).

The Chair

The Chair

Today I’m moving on to making the stocks.  This will be a photo op piece with a bucky in one side of the stocks and an empty set of holes for trick or treaters to pose in on the other side.

Spider Scene:

  • Finish Spider Egg Sacs
  • Build one new webbed up victim

Torture Scene:

  • Build a Rack
  • Build a Wheel
  • Build a Chair
  • Build Stocks

Misc Stuff:

  • Repair the Skeletal Organist’s mechanism
  • Assess older props and repair as needed

Posted in Haunt Progress, Prop Building | No Comments »

Spider Egg Sac How-To

Saturday, September 4th, 2010

I have added a how-to to the Projects section that details how I created my spider egg sacs.

Go check it out!

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Breaking on the Wheel

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Earlier I was detailing the props I really need to complete to be ready for this year.  Well, one trip to the Christmas Tree Shop (of all places) netted me a 36″ wagon wheel!  This made for a really simple torture device for one of my Mr. Thrifty skeletons… the Wheel!

I bought some Iron Pipe and flange fittings, screwed one flange to the wheel, the other flange to the ground and ran a 36″ pipe between them thus suspending the wheel 36″ off the ground.

To that I tied a Mr. Thrifty with his limbs running in odd angles around the spokes.  Have a look.

Breaking on the Wheel

What a way to die...

That’s one down.

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Crunch Time!

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Well, August is nearly over now and that means the September – October crunch is on.  We are a mere 61 days away from Halloween now.

I have a to-do list of things to finish up by the end of September so I can start the set up process in October.

Here is what I really  need to finish by October 1st:

Spider Scene:

  • Finish Spider Egg Sacs
  • Build one new webbed up victim

Torture Scene:

  • Build a Rack
  • Build a Wheel
  • Build a Chair
  • Build Stocks

Misc Stuff:

  • Repair the Skeletal Organist’s mechanism
  • Assess older props and repair as needed

That’s what I need to get done to ensure the plans I have for this year are implemented.  I may do other stuff in addition to the aforementioned, but that will all be considered a bonus.

Posted in Prop Building, Prop Ideas | No Comments »

Spider Egg Sac

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

After tons of technical difficulties over the past few weeks with the HauntForum server (which also hosts this site), I can get back to blogging here again.

I have spent some time this week working on some Spider Egg Sacs to help better flesh out the spider area of the walkthrough.  I have a build process I’m pretty happy with so I will be documenting it for the first new how-to I’ve done in about 3 years!

Here is the end result of what I did… it involves a balloon wrapped in cheesecloth and applying great stuff foam over the cheesecloth.  Two coats of foam was enough to make the structure rigid.  Basecoat of black paint, dry brushed on progressively lighter layers of brown paint and then wrapped it in common store-bought spider webbing.  Spray on some flat clear coat and it’s done!

I will be gluing on a bunch of small black plastic spiders to complete it.

Spider Egg Sac

Spider Egg Sac

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Quick Update

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

I FINALLY have my 3-axis skull working 100% with the VSA Software!!!  I had posted a few questions on HauntForum.com to (hopefully) get some help from somebody that may have used the same controller I am using.  It paid off big time and I finally know how to set up the controller to function with the software.

Also, I am almost done re-painting those two tombstones from the last update.  I will be putting the finishing touches on that tomorrow.

Beyond those two things, I’ll probably start building the items I need for this year’s talking skeleton idea.  I’m not spilling the beans on this one yet as I think it is sort of original as well as comical and hope to not see it copied until I’ve done it myself.  I’ll probably show it off closer to Halloween.  :)

Posted in Prop Building, Prop Rehab | No Comments »

This Weekends Projects

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

I have three projects I’m trying to tackle this weekend.  The make and take earlier this month really energized me and I’ve been working on stuff pretty much every day since!

First task for the weekend was to rehab the toe-pincher coffin I built last year.  I had built it based on ScareFX’s plans and I had rushed through the process.  The coffin was used last year but it was extremely flimsy so I had to be careful with it when moving it around.  To remedy this, I re-framed the inside of it and used Gorilla Glue at all the joints to help make it more durable.  Task: Complete!

The second task this weekend is to work on the 3-Axis Skull some more.  I had found out this past week I had the servo linkages improperly aligned which caused the head to move in a less-than-optimal fashion.  This evening I re-aligned them and tested it out with Pololu’s Maestro Software.

Now that the servos are aligned properly, I need to get them working with the Pololu Micro Maestro controller via Brookshire Software’s VSA program.  As of this writing, I have not been able to get the software to talk to the controller properly.  Thanks to some help on HauntForum (from some more experienced than I) it would seem that my problem may be that I do not have the baud rate set correctly on the controller.  I will be trying that tomorrow some time and see if I can start programming the show once I get it running correctly.  Task: In-process…

The last item for the weekend is to re-paint my Romanian tombstone.  I originally built it back in 2005 and I have never liked the paint job I did on it.  I will be re-doing the paint tomorrow using a style similar to what I recently used to re-paint the obelisk earlier this month.

Posted in Prop Building, Prop Rehab | No Comments »

3 Axis Skull Setback

Monday, July 19th, 2010

I decided to work on mounting my 3 axis skull onto a bucky body this evening.  To start, the kit I have has a threaded rod that is a larger diameter than the rod on the Bucky meaning a 3/8-16 coupling nut alone won’t mount the skull to the body because Bucky’s rod is a 5/16-18 threaded rod.  In addition to that, even if the coupling nut was the right diameter for both threaded rods, the head of the skull would be sitting a good 4 – 6 inches above the neck making the thing look ridiculous.

In a “hack” move, I decided to cut down the length of the two threaded rods by about 2″ each and would hammer the coupling nut down into the neck and hold it in with hot glue.  This worked except when I was screwing the skull down into the coupling nut, I over-torqued the rotate coupling inside the skull and busted the linkage.  It’s no big setback, but it is annoying enough I’ve decided to get in from the heat and call it a night.

Mistakes made in the heat of the summer make me 10x angrier than most other times.

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