I had some free time tonight so when I got home from work I decided to quickly slap the base coat of paint onto the obelisk I’m repairing. I used some Drylok on it since it has a rough, somewhat stony texture to it.
As you can see from the first image below, I have been experimenting with some different painting techniques before I put the base coat on. I think my attempts at staining it and painting on some moss looked good, so I will probably go with that on the final product.
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.
Over the winter some mice devoured a huge section of foam on one of the corners of my Obelisk grave marker.
So, in an attempt to turn lemons into lemonade, I am going to treat the chewed-away section as though it is a chunk of the stone that was damaged at some point in time. This means sanding the teeth marks away and re-painting the stone.
Since I’m going to be doing that, I also have a little upgrade I will be making to the stone. Back at the very first Massachusetts Make and Take meeting, we all made foam skull castings. Mine had gotten a little deformed and was turned into a half skull. I am upgrading the the stone by attaching this skull to one of the faces of the obelisk.
Here is the progress I managed to make today. I sanded the damaged section, stripped the paint off of the portion the skull will be attached to, and glued on the skull. I also patched all the gaps, dents, dings, etc with wood putty.
It has been quite some time since I last updated this site. This is due to the roller coaster that 2010 has turned out to be as a year so far.
Back in February, I got some terrible news at work. The company I was working for had made the decision that in November 2010 they were going to move from Massachusetts to Florida. I made a brief assessment of my financial situation and took into account that I’d be moving away from my family and friends and promptly rejected their offer to me to move. I did so figuring that I’d have until November to find a job.
A week later, I received a call from the COO that I would be laid off in June.
That put the quest for a new job into the fast lane! I had already started looking anyhow, but now I really had to accelerate things. The situation with the economy wasn’t helping very much and there wasn’t much in my field of work available.
Fortune did smile upon me and after applying at a number of companies, I finally got a call from a prestigious lab for an interview. Just before I was to be laid off, I was hired at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and am happily settled in now.
The effect all this had on my haunt activities was that it put my haunt in jeopardy. Unsure of my employment situation meant at best I would just set up everything from last year again with no new additions and at worst I wouldn’t be able to set up at all.
With three months left to go now I will be working to re-hab some older, decrepit props and complete a few unfinished ideas from recent years. There won’t be much in the line of new items this year but I’m just happy to be haunting at all.
I finally finished the animation for the Skeletal Organist this afternoon. I couldn’t have done it without help from my friend Derek who came up with the idea of using a crank shaft beneath the arms. Big props go out to my friend Bob Baker for making the shaft and coupler to mount the shaft.
My idea was to create a mechanism that would work from within the bucky chest cavity, but with time running out, I didn’t think I could pull that off by Halloween.
All I have left to do now is spray the mechanism black, put the skeleton’s costume and head on and this scene is basically done. What a long crazy road it’s been.
I was out in the shed working on the skeletal organist this afternoon and a car pulled into the driveway. It was a reporter for another local newspaper, this time the Pembroke Mariner. I’m going to be in this Friday’s edition, just in time for Halloween.
About a week ago I answered a bunch of questions for a reporter at “The Pembroke Express.” Here is the article he wrote about our little Halloween Yard Haunt.
Here is a quick video preview showing the set I’ve built inside the shed. Next up, I’m building a bench for the organ and seating a full-sized “Bucky” Skeleton at it.
Today I finally finished painting the stone walls in the skeletal organist scene.
I also made a little progress with the organ itself. I pulled the back off and found where the organ’s amplifier was. I disconnected the organ from the amp and hooked a CD player up to the amp so I can now play any music I want through the organ!
I also just realized it’s been a while since my last update. In addition to the above mentioned progress, I have also built our Pallet shack and set up the cemetery in the front yard. It’s 19 days until Halloween and for once, I feel like I’m on track for a change.
