# Building a Skeletal Lantern Groundbreaker



## Blarghity (Sep 2, 2012)

First, the lantern I planned to use. Awesome yard sale find, isn't it? I had to repair the glass, but the rest of it is beautifully rusted. However, I am now strongly leaning toward making a lot of these arms to hold witch jar lanterns, which can be seen in an incomplete state in the background.










Anyway, it stands just shy of 18 inches tall with the hand, leading me to somewhat exaggerate the arm, so I could ensure the4 lantern had obvious ground clearance. leading me to choose 14 inch arm bones. Make that 14 1/2 inches, as the PVC elbow consumes 1/2 inch from each. Cut two length, each 14.5 inches long and stick them in the elbow. That's 29 inches used out of 60 to 120 that you bought.

Now, one end of this will be slipped over PVC. The end intended for that, I usuall draw a ring around so I can keep track of the end meant to contact the ground. The other end of that piece of PVC, I will seal with eather Great Stuff or hot glue, to keep moisture and vermin out. While there is little risk of weather-based paper mache deterioration with this design, a hollow, dark tube where moisture and heat can gather can produce a mildew or mold problem. So to allow space for a length of rebar, the tube needs to be sealed at the opposite end. 










Note my table. It is a metal patio table that has fold down sides and wheels allowing it to be converted into a cart that stores the three folding chairs that came with it. I use it for my workspace because it is small and light enough to easily move indoors and there's a hole in the middle for a patio umbrella, perfect for holding a piece of rebar to simulate groundbreaker and tombstone mountings.

Back to the arm, I don't have a can of Great Stuff handy right now, so I'm sealing it with hot glue. I also created a wireframe coat hanger & cardboard hand, which I also hotglue into other PVC tube at this point as well. That's the hand I said I'd skip instructions on in the last post. 










That done, assemble your arm from shoulder to wrist by simply inserting the two PVC tubes into the elbow connector. You can glue it if you want, or secure it with machine screws, but to be honest, the gray PVC forms much tighter slip fittings than the white stuff does. With this particular project, I'm going the machine screw route. It will give the paper mache a little something extra to bite onto.

As you can see in the photos, I've done strength testing for the arm, to make sure it can hold up the lantern. I should hope it does, seeing as there's about 3/4 of a glue stick holding it in place. 


















Two things to note: No, I have not painted anything. My camera is just crappy that way, washing out the green wire to look white. Also, wow, the witch jar lanterns mysteriously finished themselves while I was preparing this post! 

Next Post: bone shaping with paper mache.


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## Blarghity (Sep 2, 2012)

This post was supposed to be Bone Shaping with Paper Mache, but it has turned into Reinforcing the Wrist.

Upon reinspection of the wrist, I discovered I had created a compression joint in the wrist. The wire and glue inside the pipe at the back of the wrist formed a joint that became stronger with weight applied on the hand, but on the palm side, the joint actually popped loose. So I hit the palm side with some more hot glue and then capped everything off with a little epoxy.

So there you have it. When fabricating your hand, give yourself about 6 inches of wire for forming the wrist.

Thus today is a day off as the epoxy properly cures. Sorry about that, folks.


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## Crunch (Oct 23, 2008)

Commenting for subscription purposes.


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## Saruman of Many Colours (Sep 8, 2010)

Blarghity said:


> Now the first question I'll be asked is "why PVC electrical conduit?" The answer is pretty simple. This is a load bearing structure we're building
> The object of this is to build a durable lantern holding ground breaker as cheaply as possible. PVC electrical conduit, which is gray in color, is significantly more rigid than the typical white PVC we see in so many projects. Secondly the white and grey PVC components are 100% compatible, unlike the tan-colored hot water PVC. This compatibility also means you can use the awesome electrical PVC connectors with their crazy sweeping curves with white PVC pipe as well. Third, it is cheaper in my area - 10' of white schedule 40 PVC water pipe is $1.73 while 10' of grey rigid schedule 40 PVC electrical conduit is $1.32. Fourth, if you're building something truly immense, or just tall, the electrical conduit PVC has a coupling molded into one end, allowing two lengths to slip fit together.


Interesting. Did not know that. Thanks for the tips.


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