Making a Halloween Grim Reaper

[Music] well hey there guys and welcome back on this week's show a halloween decoration well i know that halloween is quite some time away but that doesn't mean that you can't get some decorations done and what better time to do it than in the spring winter that sort of thing when the outdoor activities are a little uh lacking so this one here is actually a statue and we need to make it so that's collapsible but the whole thing starts with a piece of two by four well what i have here is an old five gallon pail it used to be a garbage can in my shop but it's been since been replaced and now it will be repurposed as the base for our statue so this will be actually filled with concrete but i have a piece of 2x4 here that is approximately two feet long it doesn't matter the length as long as it extends outside of the bucket so the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to coat this entire piece of 2x4 with plastic wrap and once i get that done i'm going to coat it with vaseline so we're going to be generous with this vaseline and the reason we're putting vaseline on here is this piece of two by four is going to be sunk into concrete and we do not want the two by four sticking in the concrete so we'll coat this with vaseline and that will prevent it from sticking so what i've done is i've got some quick mix concrete and i've mixed up one bag and we're going to place a little bit here in our bucket and now we can sync our 2x4 into that but we want to make sure we offset it and i'll show you why well the reason you want to offset it is so that you will still be able to use the handle of your bucket so make sure you put it to the back so that your handle is still usable and then surround it with the rest of your concrete and with that done now before it sets up level it up make sure you can still use the handle of your bucket and put it aside to set for at least 24 hours well at this point now you want to decide how tall our i don't even know what you call this you know what i'm going to call it a grim reaper just because that's what i think it's going to look like at the end but you want to decide how tall you want this creature to be and for me i want it to be about five foot eight so i have cut oh which just so happens to be the same height as my wife so anyway i have cut a piece of two by four to be five feet eight inches long and we need to mount our little skull that we saw earlier in the show on it so i picked up this skull from a craft store it was on clearance for like 50 off so we need to mount this up here on our two by four we kind of want it to be a little bit forward and we also want it to be facing just a little bit down so what i'm going to do is i'm going to place it roughly in the position that i want we're going to mark out a hole in the back or on in the underside of our skull and i'm going to cut an access hole to make it so that we can slide it down over our 2x4 [Music] so with the whole cut in our skull this will mount something like that and we will eventually screw it into place but for now we need to move on and make the shoulders so in order to make the shoulder pieces i'm going to need a piece of 2x4 that is 16 and a half inches long well i've drawn a line on our piece of 2x4 that is seven and a quarter inches in from one end and that will actually be where it mounts on our 2x4 upright i've also placed a mark that is at one and three quarters of an inch over and drawn a square line this is where we are going to add a threaded insert as well we are going to place two half inch dowels so i'm going to drill a couple holes sink in our half inch dowels and place our threaded insert in and then i'm going to come back and see it and show you what it is that we've got here so this is what we're looking at now i have two half inch holes drilled at three quarters of an inch in from either side of our two by four i have a 5 16 diameter through hole drilled right there in the middle and then on the back i've hammered in a threaded insert so what i'm going to do is i'm going to place some dowel centers you've seen me use these on the show before we're going to place them right in those half inch holes i've drilled a 5 16 hole where i want my shoulder to be and i have here a quarter 20 threaded bolt which is the same thread count as my insert so all i'm going to do is i'm going to place my bolt through this hole into the threaded insert we're just going to start screw it in you don't want to go all the way we're going to get a square on here let's remove the head we're going to get a square on here to make sure that the shoulders are square to the body once you're happy with that alignment we're just going to screw this in place and those dowel centers are going to mark the position for our half inch holes [Applause] and we should have on the back two perfect marks that match our holes in the other piece so what i'm going to do is drill another three quarter inch deep half inch diameter hole and then we're going to cut some inch and a half long half inch diameter dowels so with those two half inch diameter three quarter inch deep holes drilled in our upright piece we have two pieces of half inch diameter dowel they're inch and a half long we're going to glue them into our shoulder piece once we get them glued in here they will be like registration pins and they will just sit in just like that and then our quarter 20 bolt from the other side with a washer will screw it into place and keep it from moving now this what i've shown you here is going to be the typical joint for the rest of this project so when i mention that you can drill in your dowels and your threaded insert that is what i'm talking about because we do need this to be able to be taken apart so i'm going to unbolt this now and glue in those dowels and then we can move on to the next step now the shoulders are actually uneven here and they're done like that on purpose this left shoulder actually sticks out an inch and a half beyond what this one does and the reason for that is so that we can put an arm piece on this side so what i want to do is the same way that we did the shoulder joint i want to make this arm piece so that it kind of looks like this it's going to be holding well you'll see after but what i want to do is i'm going to lay this out the way that i think it should be and i'm going to do the same dowel joints screwing the whole thing together temporarily with threaded inserts until i have it the way that i want it now that was our elbow joint and now we're going to do the same thing for our upper shoulder the only difference here for the shoulder is that instead of one of these inserts where we hammer it in it's going to be one that screws in in order to hold it in place i will also say that the longer piece here is the forearm piece so i'm going to attach the shoulder and when i get that done i'm going to come back and show you where we're at so far so i know this looks a little strange but we're getting there honest once we get it all covered it's going to look great so the next thing i want to do is i have this eye bolt i want to thread it in right to the end here screw it all the way in and then i'm going to get a pair of pliers and open it up just a little bit if you don't want to do that that's fine you can just use a hook and put it in the end and that's going to hang something pretty cool a little later i'll show you that when we get there i guess the next thing we can do is we can drill down through our head and place a couple of number eight screws in the top of his head to hold the skull in place wow well the next thing that we need here is a canvas drop cloth and i just picked this up from the big box store in my area it's nine feet by 12 feet so what i want to do is along the 12 foot length i want to cut three sections that are two feet wide and then whatever is left over we will use it for the rest of it so i'm going to cut that up and i'm going to come back and show you and show you what we need to do with this well here we are the next day the concrete is pretty much set and now comes the fun part i have to get this two by four out of here now hopefully if all went well that vaseline and the plastic wrap did its job and this should release out of here but let's see how it goes oh it's coming let's get my foot up on here that's no easy task but it is coming out there we go all right let's take our plastic wrap out of there and now we have here you know what let me change the camera and i'll show you what we're looking at now and there we have a nice little setting i guess we'll call it that our 2x4 for our statue can go into so let's sync our actual uh statue into this and i'll show you what we're gonna do next so one thing that the plastic wrap does other than keep the vaseline from soaking into your 2x4 and allowing it to separate it makes the hole a little larger than the 2x4 so that it makes it a little easier to sink our grim reaper here into so i'm going to add his shoulders and his armpies and then i'll show you what we did with all of that material that canvas drop cloth well now in two of our two foot wide canvas pieces i have cut a hole right in the middle i don't know if you can see that and that is to allow our guy's head to go through so the first thing we want to do is from left to right just like this we're going to place one of our two foot strips of material right over our grim reaper's head now i have also if you can see this here i've painted his neck black because i didn't want it to show so you want to arrange the material so it comes up just like that and it will be under his arm something like that now our next piece that will be added is going to be our off cut if you remember we cut three two foot lengths and we had one piece at the end that would be left over and that's gonna be for his sleeve so what we're going to do is drape it over just like this so that hangs down over his hand and bring it up to his shoulder up here just like this all right just like that now what i'm going to end up doing is at his arm up here i'm going to be placing a velcro piece once i get the materials situated the way i want i'll be placing the hook section of the velcro on the 2x4 and i will sew the um the loop section of the velcro onto the material of his arm so anyway there is his sleeve in place and now you need that other two foot section with the hole in it so this next section where we went front to back with the first one this one here is going to go side to side to close in this cloak just like this so down over his head just like this and then that will drape over we'll center it it will drape over his back just like that and over his front just like a cloak and now the very last piece that you're going to need well it's the last two foot piece and this will be his hood so what we're going to do is drape this over our grim reaper just like this with the seam there in the center the center line right in the middle just like that now this as well i am going to use a piece of velcro both on the skull and on the material in order to keep it in place and there is one more thing that i want to add i have to go get it i'll be right back so the very last piece that we want to add to our halloween decoration check this out okay so if you remember a while back on the show i converted this old oil lamp to an electric and i put an led flame bulb in it and there isn't too much that's done on my show without some kind of thought process and this is the perfect accessory for this halloween decoration this lamp actually sits on my roll top desk and i like to have it on at night it just gives a nice yellow glow while i'm working and i thought this would be the perfect addition to this project for him to hold this oil lamp so there's still more to do here but before i can do much of anything else where we have cut this fabric it's really frayed or it's starting to fray and i fully expected that so i'm going to have to take this inside i'm going to use my wife's sewing machine we're going to fold over a hem and i'm going to hem the entire cut edges of each one of these pieces just to keep them from fraying anymore and once i get that done there's one more thing i want to do to this project well on all the cut edges i've finished all of the hemming and what i've done for the holes around the neck is i've just done a simple zigzag stitch all the way around to keep it so that it'll fray but it'll only fray up to that zigzag stitch and then it will stop there so the next thing that i want to do is give this a little color so what i have is three gallons of water in this pail along with some salt and some dish soap now this is the directions for this particular die i would check the type of dye that you are using and make sure that you're doing it as per their directions so i'm using black dye and i'm just going to place this in here and the next thing i want to do is take our material which i've already wet and i'm only using two pieces here just to give it room in the bucket and we're just going to place them in here and then i have to stir this for 30 minutes in order to get them to die black i kind of figure they're going to come out gray and that's actually what i'm hoping for so i'm going to mix up a second batch of this get the other two pieces of material dying in here and once i've got them dyed rinsed and then cleaned and dried i'll come back and i'll see you well after all of the dyeing and the washing and the drying and then i had to iron it this is what we end up with look at that color that is awesome it came out this nice kind of a a sky gray kind of a dirty gray and i think it's going to look great on our grim reaper statue but let's get it on them and see how it looks oh my this is looking awesome okay there's one more thing that i want to do and that is i don't like all of this plain gray fabric as much as i love the color i'm not a fan of the uh the solid the solid one tone of it so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna take this outside and just in the folds in certain areas i'm gonna blast it with some flat black spray paint just to dirty it up and give it a little bit of like an old dirty look if you know what i mean so once i get that done the very last thing that i want to do is i want to attach that velcro that i told you about so i'm going to adhere a piece of velcro here to the top of his skull and then sew its mating piece onto the hood to hold his hood in place and i'm going to do the same thing with his sleeve here and once i get that velcro piece on there and the spray painting i'll come back and see ya and show you what i ended up with now let me just show you what i've done to accommodate the storage the shoulder piece i've actually drilled some holes here into our spine in such a way that they line up and allow us to store our piece flush with our dowels sitting right down inside here our forearm piece gets mounted right here on the back of our board i have put another threaded insert i don't know if you can see that there but we have another threaded insert so all i want to do is line these up just like this this one these ones here will come from the other side and screw into our insert and then this one here same thing and everything is stored now and ready to be put away takes up as little room as possible and keeps everything together including all the hardware for when you need it next season and there you have it a halloween grim reaper statue yard decoration type thingy guys halloween for me is a load of fun my wife and i love the whole concept we do a large display in our yard and have a lot of fun with it everything from graveyards to uh myself on stilts with a grim reaper costume on up to dracula on the roof skeletons everywhere we have a ton of fun and now this year this is going to be awesome in the front yard as well you know just because halloween is a few months away doesn't mean that you can't prepare and really this didn't take that much to put together it's all just a bucket some cement a couple lengths of 2x4 a plastic head and a tarp that is it that's all there is in this the lamp i already had and i just incorporated it into my design but that doesn't mean that you have to do that why not if you wanted to why not put the um arm out and make one of those sickle things or scythe or whatever they are that the grim reaper carries uh make one of those for it to hold instead of the lantern if the lantern is not your thing but for me i love this idea and i love the lantern and this is going to be a great addition when halloween rolls around again now truth be told i did measure my wife for these dimensions because i wanted it to be about five foot eight and i wanted the dimensions between the joints of the arms to be right as well as the width of the shoulders so i actually measured my wife's arm with her in a pose that way i got the proper measurements and there's nothing wrong with doing that if you want it taller or whatever give the tall person a measure or just make up your own measurements you have to remember this is fantasy this is fun there are no guidelines as to what you do there's no magic formula as to how to put it together the one thing i love about this entire project is the storage and i showed you how it all bolts together in one streamline effect and it can just go up in the attic of my shop and then be brought out again later on the bucket of concrete you know what i can sit it behind my shed and not worry about it flip it upside down and leave it what's gonna hurt a bucket of concrete absolutely nothing so storage options are really great for this guys it's a lot of fun it's a great project and if you love halloween you have to try it honestly because i think it looks absolutely fantastic [Laughter] guys if you haven't already please don't forget to like and subscribe click that bell so that you don't miss notifications of future episodes of the show this one's been an absolute blast i loved every bit of it from the sewing machine to the dyeing the material to the 2x4 to the painting i loved it all it was just a blast i hope you had fun with it i hope you enjoyed it i hope you're going to try it for yourself and honestly guys i hope you're going to join me again next week when i bring you yet another alternative tuesdays you

Channel: Acutabove Woodworking

Views: 3,103

Rating: 4.8720002 out of 5

Keywords: halloween, grim reaper, making Halloween decorations, scary, decoration, spooky, yard statue, 2x4, skeleton, cloak, home made decoration, concrete, kenbo, kennyearrings, acutabove, wood, woodworking, wood working, how to, tutorial, diy, educational, demonstration, instructional, homemade, home made, shopmade, shop made, easy, project, simple, craft, crafting, learning, technique, quick project, weekend project, easy project

Id: 2hmUrkRY328

Length: 26min 28sec (1588 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 07 2021