# Technological Tombstone of Terror (build log/tutorial)



## shadowopal (Sep 6, 2007)

Fantastic! Looking forward to part two now.


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## guitarist155 (Sep 25, 2007)

I love the technology built into this, great job.. my reason for commenting though is the atom in the background  count me as salivating lol


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## havok1919 (Oct 23, 2009)

guitarist155 said:


> I love the technology built into this, great job.. my reason for commenting though is the atom in the background  count me as salivating lol


Hahah... Good eye! Yeah, this time of year it's primary use is "Halloween prop holder-upper". It *is* terrifying though, so I guess sort of appropriate here too.


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## havok1919 (Oct 23, 2009)

Part 2:

I wanted to use the third (and final) 1" thick piece of foam as a removable (if need be) back 'cover' to the prop and LCD panel. The front three pieces are already glued together (3/4", 1", 1"), so I placed the final piece on the stack and sanded the outer edges with some ~150grit paper to make them more or less all even. At this time I also took a drill and a ~1/4" bit and drilled six holes through the back side around the perimeter (location isn't critical, but I tried to keep them near the edge and in thick sections of the foam). The holes will be used to secure the pieces together without gluing them using the following steps.









I removed the last piece of foam (which we're using for the back cover) and set it aside. Looking at the back of the main tombstone (with the LCD inside) I then took a soldering iron to the holes made by the drill and enlarged them to about 1/2" diameter.









Using some 1/4" bolts as a guide, I put a couple of hex nuts on the end of each bolt-- just tight enough so that both nuts can still turn. I ran a bead of hot glue around the nuts holding them together, and while the glue was still hot...









...pressed the nuts+glue into the holes that had been enlarged by the soldering iron. This makes threaded studs for bolts to screw in to. They're fairly sturdy, but you really don't want to go much more than finger tight with the bolts when you attach the back panel. The following photo shows the nuts glued in place (and a couple bolts too).























At this point I attached the 'back' (it also has a smaller cutout where the monitor was still pretty deep) and started using monster mud (drywall joint compound + latex paint) to paint around the foam and hide the seams from the sheets and the various glued-on decorations. 

A couple notes here-- the monitor will get warm in there, so you might want to cut some air vents in the back. I left part of the monitor exposed (and Halloween here is cold; probably in the 50's) so I wasn't too worried about heat. Similarly, if you want the back panel to be *easily* removable, you shouldn't monster-mud it together with the other three. (Instead, use some tinfoil between the layers so it will pull apart easily.) For mine, I was OK with the monitor being 'captive' forever and removing the back would cause some damage to the edges that would require paint touch-up-- but I'd only need to do that if the monitor died.

At this point the system should be pretty water-tight once the edges are mudded and additional paint goes on. This isn't a great rainy-weather prop, but you could add a little more flashing and stuff to protect the monitor on the back further if your back panel doesn't totally enclose it.

Here you can see the back piece on and the start of the mud. I used short (1.5" bolts with large washers) to prevent from tearing up the foam:








I had the edges pretty well sanded down and there wasn't too many large gaps in the front decorations, so I only used monster mud in two applications just around the areas I wanted to 'fill'.








Next, since everything it nicely bolted together I was able to lay the prop down to make it a little easier to work on. I cut another short piece of foam and beveled the edges and attached it to the base of the tombstone. It's just a cosmetic piece to give it yet more depth. My final piece of scroll work went down there as well, along with some additional cracks and distressing.

Like I mentioned before, I should have waited to cut the last foam out from the pentagram, but since I'd already done it I had to carefully hand paint that area. At this point I switched to using Drylok with some black acrylic paint mixed in for a neutral gray tone.








From here on out, it's basic tombstone finishing 101. Two coats of the gray Drylok:








Some drybrushing with a lighter grey acrylic and some staining with watered down black in the cracks and crevasses:








And finally some airbrushing and a similar paint treatment on the skull:








That's pretty much it for the 'tombstone' portion. Next up is the laser and LED lighting!

[End Part 2]


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## havok1919 (Oct 23, 2009)

Part 3:

Next up is creating the LED lighting and Laser Vortex effect. There's various ways to create a laser vortex. The simple/cheap type is to just mount a small mirror on the end of a motor shaft at a slight angle and bounce a laser off of it. Google "laser vortex how to" and there's plenty of online tutorials for the details. Mine isn't very different.

To keep the laser system small, I used two mirrors and a green laser 'module'. For most applications, just using a green laser pointer (a couple dollars on eBay) will be the easiest way to go. (I made some tweaks to mine to run it from a plug-in power source, but batteries in a pointer should last a whole evening, so that might not be worth the effort.)

I had two small front surface mirrors (the 'shiny' part of the mirror being on the front of the glass and not behind it-- cheaply had from eBay or Electronic Goldmine, etc.) so I bounce the laser off the first one on to the second. That way the laser doesn't have to be in front of the mirror, but you can do it however fits the best for you. I literally just glued the mirror to the motor with hot glue and glued the motor to some scrap foam. Then I used just a dab of glue to hold the second mirror in place as well as the laser. Lining everything up took a little trial and error, but once it was right I just glued things in to place. Optics engineers will cringe, but it works:









The laser will bounce off the mirrors and draw a circle (or oval, depending on the alignment). The idea is to line that up such that the laser clears the top 'window' and shines on the inside of it, preventing any laser light from escaping from the prop. The laser is low power (5mW) and the mirror is sweeping it quickly (so it's likely "eye-safe" anyway), but better to be safe than sorry. 









With the laser running I just held it up to find about the right distance from the back of the tombstone and then cut a piece of foam to the right length. Hot glue again was used to secure the laser vortex part to the 'support' and I held it in place until the glue cooled to assure the proper orientation. If there's anything blocking the vortex I simply melted it away in the foam, and if there was light getting anywhere I didn't want it to go, I used a little black electrical tape to block it.

The foam construction could result in a little vibration depending on the motor for the vortex-- a harder material like wood/metal/plastic could be used instead. The foam in mine seems to be holding up OK though. Once the laser is mounted you can run a little fog/smoke (I just used one of the ~$20, 400W mini-foggers) and see how the vortex looks. 









Some matte black paint was used to black out the top of the support holding the laser and the inside of the arched 'window'. Basically if anything was looking too reflective I just hit it with black. The skull itself hides the laser + scanning mirror assembly from view.

To give the piece a little more 'mood' lighting, I used a strip of RGB LEDs and a small LED light controller. eBay again is a good source-- "RGB LED strip" will get you the LEDs (a few dollars for a foot long strip) and another ~$15 or so will get you a controller with a remote control.

The LED strip goes inside the front edge of the window, behind the lip which hides it from any direct line of sight:









The strips are self-adhesive, so it's just peel and stick. They offer waterproof versions; I just used the standard type instead.

Shown again from a wider angle (also, with the laser on) :









The RGB controller is only about 1" x 1.5", so I simply glued it in to place along side the support arm for the laser. The remote control receiver is on a short piece of wire, so I painted that black and let it sit upright so that the remote control can be used to change colors/effects from the front of the prop:









The controller remembers whatever the last color setting and program was (constant on, fading, cycling, strobing, etc.), so once it's set you can turn the entire system on and off from one power strip. Here's purple in action:









In the next part, I'll show how I built the back piece (to 'keep the fog in') and some other loose ends...

[End part 3]


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## Samhain1031 (Oct 16, 2011)

This is so sik!!! I am totally going to do this with an old tv I have! Absolutely mind blowing.


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## The Ripper (Dec 31, 2009)

Whoe!!!! Wow I'm getting stoked for Halloween 2012! Can't wait for the rest of your tut! Thanx a lot for sharing!


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