scratch hollow

Fence How-To

2010-10-28T20:02:00.021-04:00

For several years, I've used a small wooden fence made out of lathe strips but it was small and didn't scale well as the cemetery grew larger (plus it was a safety hazard since the top of the pickets were pointed). So this year, I decided that it was time for my cemetery to have a proper fence.

I knew that I needed 60 ft of fence so I searched the various Halloween forums and websites for something easy and cheap to build. Eventually, I settled on this how-to. It used many of the most common Halloween materials - pvc and wood - so I know I would be comfortable working with it. The idea to use electrical conduit instead of plumbing pipe was a great tip since it is closer in color to what the final piece should look like and it was slightly cheaper than plumbing pipe. A little more investigation led me to a staggered pattern that I really liked, so I decided to incorporate it also.

One problem I had while building the fence was that none of the forums mentioned measurements so I had to come up with my own. From looking at pictures of existing fences, I figured that the height of the long posts was about 3ft. Since the short posts were a little over half the size of the tall posts, I decided that the short posts would be 2ft. This gave me a starting point for actually figuring out what I would need to purchase. To help anyone else out who may be interested in building a fence like this, here is a detailed parts list of what is needed to build one 8ft section of fence.

Tools

1" hole saw
power drill
dremel rotary tool w/ sanding head
pvc cutter
saw
tape measure

Materials

3 - 1x2x8 lumber
5 - 1/2" x 8ft electrical conduit
40 - 1" wood screws
2 - flat black spray paint
4 - metal L brackets (optional)
8 - #6 x 1/2" wood screws (optional)
16 - 3/4" finials

Instructions

1) Mark Location of Post Holes

The first thing you'll want to do is use a tape measure and mark off the hole locations on each piece of 1x2. Measure 3" from one end, mark your first hole, then mark every 6". (You should have a 3" gap from you last hole to the other edge of the 1x2.) Do this for two of your 1x2s.

For your last 1x2, you'll only need half as many holes since only the long posts will need to fit through them. So for this one, you'll need to measure 3" from the edge and make a mark. Then mark every 12" across the wood.

2) Drill the Holes

Using a 1" hole saw, drill holes at each of the marks that you made earlier.

*Tip: If your making more than 8ft of fence - which most people will be - drill the holes for one 1x2 and use it as a template for drilling your other 1x2s. It will save you a lot of time measuring each piece. Use clamps to hold your template in place while you mark your holes.

3) Sand the Holes

Cutting the holes will probably cause splintering around the edges so you'll need to use a dremel tool with a sanding head to take off the splinters.

4) Cut the Posts

Cut 8 - 2ft sections and 8 - 3ft sections of electrical conduit.

5) Assemble the Pieces

Lay out your 1x2s and insert your poles through the holes. Starting at the bottom of the fence, leave 4" of post hanging from the bottom of the 1x2 and insert a screw. Continue along the bottom 1x2 and secure each post. For the middle 1x2, leave 4" of post hanging from the top and secure each short post (don't secure the long posts to the middle 1x2). Do the same for the top 1x2, leaving 4" from the top. At this point, your basic fence is assembled. You'll notice that since you didn't secure the long posts to the center 1x2 that it will rack back and forth. Now that it's assembled, double check that the 1x2s are all even and secure your long posts to the center 1x2.

6) Attach L brackets (optional)

To hold my fence in place, I secured each end to a 3ft 4x4 post. To do this, I added a L bracket to the top and bottom of each end of the 1x2s. (Pre-drill the holes to prevent the 1x2 from splitting.)

7) Paint the Fence

From my experience, it takes about 2 cans of spray paint to cover an 8ft section of fence.

8) Add Finials

I've read a couple of way to fit the finials to the to of the posts. One way is to use a heat gun to soften the top of the post and then pressing the finial down. Another way is to shove one end of a wooden dowel into the finial and the other end into the post. I wasn't fond of either idea because I didn't want to buy a heat gun or dowels. So what I did was use my dremel (with sanding head) and grind off the inside of the finial. This worked really well and was very simple to do (the finials I purchased have a circular ridge on the bottom that I could use as a guide).

Coffin MIB Test

2009-11-08T22:46:00.001-05:00

After the unfortunate dismemberment of the hand on my lid-raiser coffin, I decided to change things up a bit and turn it into a MIB. Below you can see a test run showing the gear shape and slamming action. You may notice that the motor occasionally shuts off. This is due to the motion sensor hooked up to the power supply. (If you look closely, you can see me waving frantically, trying to get the sensor to activate.)

Since taking the video, I've upgraded the wall wart power supply with a PC power supply to give the wiper motor a little more muscle.

The Gravedigger

2009-10-29T22:45:00.001-04:00

Well, here he is, my only other prop for the year. He turned out ok - considering how little I spent on him.

His frame is a basic PVC frame with screws in the joints to hold the pose. I made the elbows adjustable using the Bride of Articulation frame technique - it works really well by the way.

I had to prop (punny!) him up this year because I couldn't think of a way to make him stand on his own. Next year, I think that I'll try screwing some U braces to the back of his legs and anchoring him to the ground with rebar. (As usual, I didn't think of this until it was too late.)

It's A Major Award!

2009-10-26T22:43:00.001-04:00

I just found out that I won the Custom Witch Potion Label Giveaway at All Together Dead. (It's a beautiful site with a lot of inspirational and useful Halloween posts. Be sure to take a look.)

The labels will arrive a little late for this year's party, but I'll put them to good use next year. Keep an eye out for them...

Pumpkin Template

2009-10-23T22:43:00.001-04:00

I came across the template that I used to carve my pumpkin head. Instead of deleting it, I thought that I would share...

The image should print nicely on a single sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper.

Pumpkin Scarecrow

2009-10-01T22:42:00.001-04:00

Here is a peak at one of the few additions this year....

2008 Haunted House

2008-10-31T22:40:00.001-04:00

Sorry, no haunted house this year...

On Alyssa's birthday last year, my wife and I found out that we were going to have another baby (Bonner - born 6/22/08). I knew going in to this year that we would have our hands full so I decided to focus on fewer projects. If that wasn't enough, we also decided to buy a house in August. All of that combined meant that a large Halloween party was out of the question.

We do plan on a big party next year and I'm already itching to begin work on some new props.

I was able to build one large prop - the witch and cauldron:

Daytime

Nighttime

Additional pictures can be found here.

Here is a low quality mp3 of the cauldron / witch sounds that I use. If you are interested in a high quality version, contact me.

Skull Book

2008-10-29T22:39:00.001-04:00

I found a cool looking skull book at Grimvisions and thought that my witch could use one. So instead of buying his(?), I decided to make my own.

For my first attempt, I decided to make the book out of cardboard and paper mache. It worked ok and looks good, but I think in the future I will use a real book so that I won't have the aggravation of paper mache.

The skull is just a foam skull (no jaw) that I bought at Wal-Mart. The candle is a real candle.

To tie it all together, I took some black, "blue stoneware", and white acrylic paint and colored everything to match.

The one part that I haven't done (but will), is add spider webs to give it an "untouched" look.

Pumpkin Patch Cake

2008-10-28T22:38:00.001-04:00

For our daughter's 6^th birthday, my wife came up with the idea to have a cake that looks like a pumpkin patch. Here's a picture of the end result.

Finished Witch

2008-10-27T22:37:00.001-04:00

I took longer to work on this than I had anticipated but she is finally complete! I also had time to build her a shelf to hold her potions, books, etc.

Witch Cauldron

2008-02-07T22:36:00.001-05:00

Here are some pics of the cauldron that I made out of an old clothes dryer drum:

Wicked Witch Prop

2008-01-01T22:35:00.001-05:00

I'm working on my biggest Halloween project for the year, a witch stirring a cauldron. Tons of inspiration can be found here and here so I'm not going in to a huge 'how-to' for this.

This project is definitely the most complex and expensive one that I have attempted. When it's completed, it will have sound, head movement, stirring movement, fog and lights for the cauldron. Two wiper motors will provide movement and will be powered by a 450 watt computer power supply. Additionally, I plan on converting a strand of green Christmas lights from AC to DC so that my power supply will also power them.

The frame is modeled after the two examples mentioned above with few modifications. The biggest difference is that I'm using a wiper motor for the head movement. This may be a bit of overkill but it's the only motor that I have available. I still need to wrap the frame in chicken wire, clothe the witch, and attach the head and hands. I'm having trouble locating an affordable mask and hands, so that part is currently on hold.

My cauldron (not pictured), is an old clothes dryer drum. The bottom already has holes, so I shouldn't have problems mounting my wiper motor (for stirring) and feeding fog through the bottom. I've made handles out of styrofoam rings and wooden brackets to mount them. Once it's painted, I'll post a picture.

2007 Haunted House

2007-10-29T22:32:00.001-04:00

7000 sq ft plastic + 400 ft extension cords + 250 ft twine + 14 cans of black spray paint + 7 months of planning and building + 7 days of set up + 6 hours of tear down + 45 minutes of scaring = 1 happy five year old

This year's haunted house was 3 times the size as the first. It was a lot of work but everything worked out as planned.

New props for this year include:

toe pincher coffin - I got the plans for this from Shallow Valley. It was really easy (and cheap) to make.
metal cage - Another one from Shallow Valley. This is a great way to make a realistic looking metal cage very cheap.
ship's wheel - My parents made my wife and I a wooden wagon a few years ago. It was beginning to fall apart so I salvaged one of the wheels for this project. I bought some wooden rollers at a craft store, cut them in half and stuck them around the rim to create a respectable ship wheel.
cannon - Had an idea to build a cannon and lucked out on finding an 18" sewer pipe for my cannon. Follow the link for details on this prop.
pillory - Made from scrap wood that I salvaged from my in-laws front deck after a remodeling.
gallows - Another project created from salvaged landscape timbers.
graveyard - Styrofoam, an exacto knife, a rotary tool and some paint were used for the tombstones. The fence is lathe strips connected with brads.

Daytime

Nighttime

Additional pictures can be found here.

Wood Bats & Spiders

2007-10-22T22:31:00.001-04:00

I wanted some cheap props to spice up my forest hay ride so I came up with these spiders and bats made from stuff that I found laying around in the yard. The bat is a magnolia seed pod with two magnolia leaves for wings. The spider is a pine cone with stick legs, two acorn cupules eyes and sticks for fangs. Hot glue everything together and you're done.

Wood Bats

Wood Spiders

More pictures here.

Swords & Daggers

2007-10-18T22:28:00.002-04:00

Materials

sill seal
3' lathe strip (sword) / 16" lathe strip (dagger)
flat black spray paint
brown spray paint
silver spray paint
staple gun

Instructions:

The process of building a sword or a dagger are almost identical. The only difference is in the length of the blade and the hilt guard.

Make the blade:

With a saw, taper one end of the lathe strip and paint silver.

Make the hilt:

Cut two pieces of sill seal long enough to wrap around the lathe strip. Paint the sill seal black. Placing the sill seal with the ridges facing out and running perpendicular to the blade, staple the sill seal to the bottom of the blade. Your finished hilt should be approximately 5" long so you will need to cut the second piece of sill seal for the correct length.

Make a sword hilt guard:

Cut a strip of sill seal 14.5". At this point, you need to get creative depending on how you want your hilt guard to look. I wanted a 'pirate' sword, so I trimmed the sill seal to the approximate dimensions below:

Spray paint the hilt guard brown. Place the slit over the tip of the sword and push down toward the hilt. Bend the other end around to the base of the blade and staple in place.

Make a dagger hilt guard:

Cut a strip of sill seal 4.5" x 1.75". Cut a 1.5" slit in the center running the length of the strip. Spray paint the hilt guard black. Place the slit over the tip of the dagger and push down toward the hilt.

Additional pictures can be found here.

How to Build a Pirate Cannon

2007-10-13T22:27:00.003-04:00

Materials

cannon

5' 8" - sewer pipe
sill seal
flat black spray paint
frisbee
2" pipe
3" ball
styrofoam
wood screws
staple gun
fun-noodle

truck

2x4s
wood screws
2" pipe bracket (2)
towel and brown fabric dye (optional)

Instructions:

Build the rear of the cannon

Cut a 1" section of 2" PVC and place it between a frisbee and a 3" ball. To secure the pieces together, drill a hole in the center of the frisbee and ball and run a threaded metal bar through everything and cap the ends with large nuts. Once everything is tightly together, spray paint the whole thing black.

Attach the rear to the cannon

The lip of the frisbee fits perfectly over the edge of the sewer pipe. To secure it, insert four wood screws through the lip into the pipe.

Add texture to the cannon barrel

Using the sill sealer, cut strips the circumference of the pipe and use a staple gun to hold the strips in place. The easiest way to do this is to start at the rear and work toward the open end. The contours on the open end of the pipe require customized thinner strips that you'll have to measure individually. Once the entire pipe is covered, paint the foam with black spray paint.

Build the barrel muzzle

The default diameter of an 8" sewer pipe is, of course, 8". If you look at a real cannon, you'll notice that they have much smaller openings. To achieved this look, buy a pre-cut round piece of styrofoam that is the same circumference or larger and manually shave off the exterior until it fits snugly into the end of the sewer pipe. Cut a center hole of 3 1/2". To paint the styrofoam, use black acrylic paint and brush (don't use spray paint).

Build the truck

The cannon truck is made from old 2x4s that I had lying around and some wood screws. Here are the basic dimensions of my truck.

Once the truck is assembled, add a 2" pipe bracket to each side and cut notches into the wood beneath them to create circular opening for the cannon 'arms'. Optionally, take some brown towels (I dyed an old white towel brown) and make cushions for your cannon to rest on. These help prevent the paint on your cannon from getting scratched.

Build the cannon 'arms'

These are built last so that they are detachable and so much about their design depended on the finished truck and cannon. Cut sections of a fun-noodle and spray paint black.

Finished cannon

Additional pictures can be found here.

Halloween Music

2007-10-11T22:25:00.001-04:00

My daughter is getting in to the Halloween spirit. She's been listening to a Halloween mix cd that I made and loves Li'l Red Riding Hood by Sam the Sham. Here's a video I took of her on my cell phone (sorry about the quality).

Haunted House Location

2007-10-08T22:23:00.001-04:00

Started prepping for this year's haunted house which will be located in my uncle-in-law's barn. I've posted some pictures here. So far, the twine is strung to hold the plastic walls and a few strobe lights are in place.

Only 6 Months Until Halloween

2007-04-11T22:22:00.001-04:00

I'm getting an early start on Halloween this year. Last year, my wife and I threw a big Halloween birthday party for our daughter and this year I want to make it bigger.

The theme for this year's party is going to be pirates so I have a lot of ideas to throw around. So far, with the help of my dad, I've built a coffin and cage (link to plans) and plan on working on a few more props in the near future.

2006 Haunted House

2006-10-31T22:20:00.001-05:00

This was our first attempt at a haunted house and I enjoyed every minute of planning and building this walk through. The map below shows the rough layout of all of the props and gives you an idea of the layout.

Click on the red arrows or the links below to view pictures from inside the house.

skeleton - The skeleton was our door greeting this year. It is a 3ft plastic skeleton that we dressed in some of our daughters old clothes. I used black yarn hung from the ceiling to hold him in place.
hallway - When you turned left, this is the view down the hallway. Spiderwebs hung from the ceiling and pictures of scary portraits are hung on the wall. At the end of the hall are our ghost bride and groom who are floating over the couch.
ghost - This is a close up of one of the hanging ghosts that we made. They were created by painting Styrofoam skulls with blacklight paint. We then stretched out a coat hanger and attached it to the bottom of the skull. The cloth on the body is shredded cheesecloth soaked in Rit whitener.
table - This is a table that we covered with a white sheet. The lamp and candles on the table were some that we had laying around the house. We used the table and sheet to hide our stereo that played our haunted house music.
dolls - These are two of my daughter's baby dolls sitting in my daughter's rocking chair. I took red finger paint and smeared it around their mouths to simulate blood. Their eyes are neon colored stickers that you can find at office supply stores.
deer and ghost - Another homemade ghost in front of three deer heads. The deer were already located in this corner so nothing special was done there. I did put neon stickers (like those used on the dolls) on the deer's eyes so that they would glow in the blacklight.

If you still haven't seen enough, here are links to videos of a 'daytime' walk-through and a 'nighttime' walk-through. I turned off the fog machines for the nighttime walk-through so that you can see the props (it's a lot scarier with the fog).

Daytime

Nighttime

Additional pictures can be found here.

Halloween Party Music

2006-10-31T12:05:00.001-05:00

After about two weeks of researching, here is a list of songs that are suitable for a Halloween themed party. Some of these were dropped from my final play list due to lyrics or time constraints (I wanted them to fit on 2 CDs). Here is the raw list...

Theme Songs

Addams Family Theme Song
Beetlejuice Theme Song
Casper The Friendly Ghost Theme Song
Ghostbusters Theme Song
Halloween Theme Song
The Munsters Theme Song
The Nightmare Before Christmas - This Is Halloween
Rocky Horror Picture Show - Time Warp
Scooby Doo Theme Song
Tales From the Crypt Theme Song

The Rest

AC/DC - Boogie Man
AC/DC - Evil Walks
AC/DC - Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be
AC/DC - Hells Bells
AC/DC - Night Prowler
Alice Cooper - Feed My Frankenstein
Alice Cooper - Poison
Alice Cooper - The Man Behind the Mask
Alice Cooper - Welcome To My Nightmare
Andrew Gold - Witches Witches Witches
Atlanta Rhythm Section - Spooky
Bobby Pickett - Monster Mash
Bow Wow Wow - I Want Candy
Carlos Santana - Black Magic Woman
Charlie Daniels Band - The Devil Went Down to Georgia
Charlie Daniels Band - The Legend of Wooley Swamp
Chopin - Funeral March
Crash Test Dummies - Peter Pumpkinhead
Cream - Strange Brew
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bad Moon Rising
Creedence Clearwater Revival - I Put a Spell on You
Dave Matthews Band - Halloween
Donovan - Season of the Witch
The Doors - People Are Strange
The Drifters - Love Potion Number 9
Eagles - Witchy Woman
Edgar Winter Group - Frankenstein
Edwyn Collins - A Girl Like You
Eels - My Beloved Monster
Gene Simmons - Haunted House
INXS - Devil Inside
Joe Satriani - Driving at Night
KC And The Sunshine Band - I'm Your Boogie Man
Leon Redbone - The Witch Queen of New Orleans
Men At Work - Who Can It Be Now
Michael Jackson - Thriller
Mitch Ryder - Devil With a Blue Dress On
Oingo Boingo - Dead Man's Party
Oingo Boingo - Weird Science
Ozzy Osborne - Bark At The Moon
Ozzy Osbourne - Mr. Crowley
Ozzy Osborne - Zombie Stomp
The Ramones - Pet Cemetary
Ray Stevens - Sittin' Up With The Dead
Reverend Horton Heat - The Halloween Dance
The Rolling Stones - Sympathy for the Devil
Rockwell - Somebodys Watching Me
Ross Bagdaserian, Jr. - Witch Doctor
Sam the Sham - Little Red Riding Hood
Sam the Sham - Wooly Bully
Sheb Wooley - One-Eyed One-Horned Flying Purple People Eater
The Specials - Ghost Town
Type O Negative - Black No. 1
Squirrel Nut Zippers - Hell
Steppenwolf - Magic Carpet Ride
Stevie Wonder - Superstition
Van Halen - Runnin' With the Devil
Van Morrison - Saint James Infirmary
Warren Zevon - Werewolves Of London
Wilson Pickett - In The Midnight Hour

Halloween Party Food

2006-10-26T11:47:00.001-04:00

I'm not going to go into too much detail with food but here are some ideas that my wife and I came up with...

Green Eyeball Ice Cubes

This recipe is my interpretation of the classic 'eyeball ice cube.' Instead of dropping pealed grapes into ice trays, now you can have the ice cube itself look like an eye. Here is what you need:

a deviled egg tray or Easter egg decorating tray (see picture)
1 jar maraschino cherries (I've tried this recipe with different candy, such as Gummy Savers and jelly beans, but they don't work well. Even though the eyes looked great, eating soggy candy pulp was not very pleasant.)
1 cup water
green food color

Instructions

Use a knife to cut the cherries in half.
Rinse the cherry slices to remove all of the red syrup.
Add one cherry slice into the bottom of each egg holder.
Add one drop of green food color to 1 cup of water and stir.
Fill each egg holder with the colored water.
Place the egg tray in the freezer until the water freezes.

Cupcake Witch

My daughter was set on having a witch birthday cake. We couldn't find bakery cakes that we liked and didn't like any of the recipes on the Internet for a witch cake so we decided to do something different. Instead of a birthday cake, we made birthday cupcakes that we pushed together into the shape of a witch and decorated with frosting, sprinkles, Twizzlers, and jellybeans. The finished cake turned out really great and required no knife to cut. We liked this idea so much that we'll probably do similar 'cakes' in the future.

Here is a mock-up that I made beforehand to get an idea of how to arrange the cupcakes and the finished cake with icing and decorations.