Category: Projects

Project Free Hugs

Somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind lives a Halloween idea generator that quite frankly scares the crap out of me.  Not exactly sure how that haunted niche in the brain came to be, but it’s there.  For most the year I keep it suppressed, held in check by the willpower of goodness and strength of ever embracing decency.  I say “most of the year” because there is a time when shadows stand guard as unearthly creatures join in allegiance to break the chains of civility and let evil thoughts deliver punishing waves to my sanity.  This sinister rip in the fabric of time has a name and it is called October for it is here when the mind fills with devil spawn ideas such as this.

Project Free Hugs Clown Halloween 2017

It is something about October training runs that bring up the most god awful concepts.  It may be the exhaustion brought on by the long race season or the long nights fretting about not having enough time to prepare for that year’s Haunted Trail of Tears.  I’ll be lost in my run, entranced by the sound of my shoes pounding the pavement and then it hits like a twitch right before you fall back on your chair.  An image will appear, clear, detailed and mortifying.  My reaction equally immediate, decisive and well, a bit disturbing.  “I have to reproduce that for next year’s haunted trail!!!”  And that sets forth a year’s worth of planning, material gathering and building.  You happen to be looking at the product from last year’s evil concept – and yes, it did make its debut last month on the Haunted Trail of Tears.  The following is a quick summary of how this all came to be.

Hit the jump to see how it all come together if you dare!

Continue reading Project Free Hugs

Project Halloween Hummer

Had a great dinner tonight with great friends to the point I’m completely stuffed. Normally I would tie on some running shoes and run off my overindulgence.  Alas, I’m laid up for about 7 more days – fall back plan, I’ll be skipping some meals tomorrow.  Being as I’m basically just sitting around watching the Illini basketball team figured there was no reason to not be productive in some manner.  Hmmmm, what to do, what to do.  Oh, I know, how about showing off this year’s addition to the Halloween pumpkin collection.

Halloween Pumpkin Collection Addition 2017

This is a bit of a departure for me.  Normally I tend to play in the darker side of Halloween.  Ghouls, goblins, demons and other haunting topics have been the go to choice for my pumpkin slashing.  Maybe I am getting soft in my new life phase north of 50.  I suspect this is a natural reflex having immersed myself in all things evil for my Haunted Halloween Trail (yes, I’ll be recounting that project soon) – just a karma correcting action to keep myself grounded in sanity.  Regardless, it is what it is – my latest offering is for the birds – Hummingbirds to be exact.  I wanted something in the birth theme this year.  Started out looking at Owls, but then stumbled on a number of nice Hummingbird outlines.  It is no secret I hang out in tattoo and stenciling forums to get my creative ideas for pumpkin carving.  Before I go any further, DISCLAIMER: the rights to the original templates used for my pumpkin pattern remain with the author.  I am only using these for non-profit personal use.  Hummingbirds are a very popular theme for tattoos.  If you want to waste a day, start googling for bird tattoos and start perusing the massive number of returned hits (warning, expect nudity to be in those returned images).  I had already captured a collection of nice Hummers for a project I was considering previous to this.  Just went back to that collection and picked out three designs that I thought looked cool and were carve friendly.  Only thing missing was a nice flower to tie it all together.  Turns out there was a nice flower stencil already in that collection (came as a side decoration to one of the Hummer designs).  Key was to have at least three flowers that I could align my bird designs to.  Worked them up in Paint Shot Pro, positioned and flipped the birds to align with the available flowers and presto… pumpkin design.

Halloween Pumpkin Collection Addition 2017

Hit the jump to learn more details about this traditional Halloween project.

Continue reading Project Halloween Hummer

Project A Better Grabber

Currently laid up a bit due to some outpatient surgery yesterday.  Good news is the only physical requirement to blog is to simply be able to bang out words on a keyboard.  Fortunately, the knife didn’t impact my ability to type so I can spend my downtime being more attentive to my loyal readers!  Yesterday (also in recovery mode) I featured a new project for this year’s Haunted Trail.  Actually, this year brought a large number of new features each of which will likely make their way here in the not too distant future.  In fact, let’s go ahead a feature another new element – this time an animated decoration.

Scenes from The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017

Yes, folks, another ground grabber.  If you recall, last year I took my first attempt at one of these (link here).  This year I wanted to improve upon that design and deliver a better product.  I had been seeing a number of designs on the web (thank you Pinterest) and opted to work off a template from Yard Haunt (link here).  I liked the fairly basic design and really liked the effect.  Of course, I have to extend and improve upon it – it’s my nature.

I knew I needed a frame to rest the arm on.  The Haunt plan used a block and what looked like nails to contain the arm itself.  My preferred medium is PVC so clearly we needed to start there ha.  There is always a struggle trying to find flat endcaps.  Places like Lowes have gone to rounded tops which are useless when you want to fix them to a board or piece of plexiglass.  Menards tends to have the flat ones when they actually have them in stock.  Knowing how much of a pain that option was, it was time to spend some time in the PVC aisle and figure out an alternative.  The results of that noodle time …

Project Grave Grabber Halloween 2017

Hit the jump to read about how this all went together!

Continue reading Project A Better Grabber

Project Alford B Bach

Moving through November at a rapid pace.  The good news is the delay in posting is due to spending some serious time in the digital darkroom to work up a number of posts from this year’s Halloween projects and the culmination into the Annual Haunted Trail of Tears.  Now I just need to bang out some accompanying words and fire up the blog posting engine. I have already posted one of the new decorations for this year – the zombie silhouettes (link here).  Next up, my first tombstone.

Project Alford B Bach Tombstone Halloween 2017

I am going to admit right up front that I didn’t get to finish all the planned steps on this project before the day of the Haunted Trail.  This particular project was slotted further down the to-do list behind other haunted trail tasks that ended up taking way longer than expected.  Most of the work was done after midnight when the other to-do list items were wrapped up for the night.  Live on the edge, use power tools when you are exhausted and half awake.

As I hope you assumed, this tombstone is not actually made out of stone.  The haunting forums are full of projects leveraging the thick 4×8 sheets of insulation panels.  They are very easy to work with and best of all, weigh very little.  I picked up a 2″ thick sheet.  Two things to know about the insulation panels – well, at least the one I picked up.  First, mine had tiny scores in it I didn’t see when I was looking at them.  Guessing this allows them to cut to standard lengths easily, but for our use, results in a stress point.  The second one is they are surprisingly expensive.  The 4x8x2 one I opted for was $26.  Putting that in perspective, a 4×8 sheet of 3/4 wood treated underlayment was only $14.  Trading ease of working with for cost.

Project Alford B Bach Tombstone Halloween 2017

Hit the jump to read about all the steps in building this year’s addition to the Haunted Trail.

Continue reading Project Alford B Bach

Project Undead: Another Year, Another Haunt

Down to the wire now. Murphy has entered stage right and wreaking all kinds of chaos on my valiant attempts to make my blog quota for this month. Turns out my hotspot can’t even get a signal on one of the busiest highways in the Midwest. Everyone is excited about driverless vehicles and we can’t even get reliable Internet access driving on major highways. I envision some kind of Simpson’s episode where all the autonomous vehicles suddenly take a right turn off the road when then hit a dead spot. Well, no time to cry over spilt milk – I have typing to do (and hopefully upload if I ever get a signal again).

Decided the last post of month would focus on something that is taking a majority of the time left over after races and training. That’s right, I bring you the first of what is likely to be many posts on the road to Halloween. Our annual Halloween party is fast approaching which means work is picking up on the highlight of the night – the Trail of Tears our haunted trek through the woods. I say picking up, rather than start because the work on this trail is a year long event. Ask my wife who has to put up with all the decoration builds that are always cluttering up the basement. Thought I would give you glimpse at one of those new decorations

Zombie Build - Halloween 2017

Although it is tough for me to admit it around friends, I do hang out on Pinterest a lot. I get accused of being a soccer mom by Linda. Truth is, the haunters are all over that site and a great wealth of ideas. One of the links that caught my attention was a backlit witches scene someone had posted. This got me thinking that would be a good idea for the trail. Seemed simple enough, cut out some shapes, add some lights and presto – new scare. To switch it up a bit, I wanted to go with a zombie theme.  First task was to find some decent zombie shapes.  That ended up being a bit of work searching through the expanse that is the Internet.  Probably went through a couple thousand images and eventually narrowed it down to two – note, not sure the source of these images are, but all rights remain with that identity – this is a non-profit use and only documented here as a reference to the concept.  Those images were placed on a grid and printed out on a standard paper.  Using the tried and true method from my childhood, gridded up larger sheets of butcher paper and transferred images by hand.  The key was to minimize cost (a critical theme in my decoration planning).  I knew I wanted to use plywood, so that gave a 4×8 dimension to work with without having to invest in multiple sheets.  With a few tweaks and rearranging, I got it to fit.  Cut those larger versions out and laid them out on the plywood.  Note, Linda and I spent a loooong time in Menards trying to find the cheapest option.  Turns out, 3/4 sealed underlayment was the cheapest plywood choice – ~$15 a sheet.  A bit rough on one side, but nice and smooth on the top side.

Zombie Build - Halloween 2017

Hit the jump to see how these new decorations turn out!

Continue reading Project Undead: Another Year, Another Haunt

Project Posey Limb Containment System

Figured it was time to post one of my recent projects.  Although I have not featured a project post in a while, I’ve actually been pretty busy with all sorts of construction efforts.  Most of them have been focused on finishing up Project Auuuuuurrnnnoooold – almost there, all the main work is now done, but I have some finishing touches that need to get banged out to finally but a bow on that multi-year endeavor.  Fortunately, today’s featured project was much quicker from start to finish.   Introducing my latest concept – the Posey Limb Containment System or PLCS for short.

Project Posey Limb Containment System

PLCS is my fancy name for PVC pipe holder – ha.  For most of the year, I usually have piles of pipe laying around for all the Posey’s that are under construction.  It wasn’t a big deal until I got the basement remodeling work nearly finished up – Linda didn’t think it went well with the new decor.  This hurt knowing that each of the Posey’s are basically a work of art which in my mind just upped the classy factor.  Figured this was not a battle worth fighting so opted to get a bit more organized.  I need to give a shout out to Pinterest for providing the basis for the concept.  Someone posted an idea to store long and thin pieces of wood by simply bungie cording a cement column form between ceiling joists.  The new finished ceiling pretty much nixed that idea, but that got me thinking – why not make an upright freestanding version.

First order of business was to make a base.  Key requirement is it had to be pretty heavy to keep from falling over.  Due to having to resolve some framing issues with a few doors in the basement, I had some 2″x2″ solid oak lumber left over – perfect – heavy and would match the rest of the trim in the basement.  Now just a quick run to Menards to pick up a 4’x1′ circular column cement form and went with another 2’x4′ clear solid oak board for the base – again, both nice looking and heavy.  The form was simply set on the base board and the 2x2s placed tangent at the four compass points.  Drew some quick lines on the outside of the side blocks provided the cut lines for the table saw.  To cut the post down a bit, a number of interim steps were omitted, but here is the base and sides attached.

Project Posey Limb Containment System

Hit the jump to see some notes on how I put it together.

Continue reading Project Posey Limb Containment System

Posey Upgrade – The Westworld Line

If I counted correctly, this just might be the 6th post for November, yeah!  Life is a bit easier when there is a large queue of already processed pictures just begging to be published.  Pretty sure there’s fodder now to take me well into January if I just stay with the quota minimum.  Truthfully, I’ll probably go a little heavy on the next couple of months to push through the rest of the 2013 images and I still have a few Halloween posts to get through.  The good news is I have officially completed processing all of the 2013 images and now started to work on the 2014 collection.  Being two years behind sure sounds a lot better than being 3 years behind ha.

The good news is I have a few days off to celebrate the annual Turkey slaughter day which will give me some time to get a few more posts out this month.  How about we start with this pleasant looking dude.
Posey 2016 - The Westworld Line
Of course, I’m talking about the one on the left.  If you have been following the Haunted Trail posts (link here) you have probably already seen this new decoration for 2016.  If I remember correctly, I didn’t give a lot of detail on it knowing that a post was forthcoming dedicated to it.  Well, we are finally here.  This is another version of my Posey line and marks the next evolution of the frame.  I already talked about the frame upgrades for this year (link here), but this is the first model in the new Posey Westworld line.  This marks the first step in a big journey to up my game in the decoration arena.  Due to uncharted territory, I started with a small prototype.

Posey 2016 - The Westworld Line

Hit the jump read more about the new model!

Continue reading Posey Upgrade – The Westworld Line

I Needz Yur Ankles

It’s the middle of November and I’m finally getting back to the Halloween 2016 posts.  I’m not so much slow as I am currently overwhelmed with projects.  All those things I put off to focus on the Halloween Trail are coming back for revenge.  Most of my time has been spent on wiring up the new garage in preparation for the required inspection – at this point pretty sure I’ve donated about a pint of blood on that project but still better than being electrocuted so fingers staying crossed as I finish that effort.  Maybe I’ll give a quick post on that in the future, especially since this will be the new home for all my outdoor decorations.  Speaking of which …
Halloween decoration 2016 - animated crawler

If you already check out the Haunted Trail 2016 walk through (link here), you probably already noticed this decoration.  This was one of the new additions this year and happens to be one of the new animated decorations – that’s right, the ANIMATED DECORATIONS that made it out on the trail this year.  Most of this year was spent trying to learn and experiment on how to bring another level of scare to the trail.  This, of course, didn’t exactly win the heart of my wife who had to put up with the build phases strewn about her basement many many months before October.

Granted most of that time was spent on another decoration that will be making its way to the blog in the not too distant future.  This decoration .. well, the base of it was constructed a week or so before Halloween, but it wasn’t finished until the night before.  The fact it actually worked and looked halfway decent is a small miracle due to the fact it was completed on serious sleep deprivation.  Let’s take a look under the covers.

Halloween decoration 2016 - animated crawler

Hit the jump to learn how this animated prop was put together.

Continue reading I Needz Yur Ankles

They Sense Your Fear Haunted Trail 2016 Pt 3 – Tis the Night

It has been a tough Sunday in the projects category.  First off I made a rookie mistake while winterizing our RV which ended up costing me hours to recover from – basically had to flush the entire system and then start all over again – a mistake I will likely never make again so at least there was a teaching point.  Then spent the afternoon battling the electrical gods trying to get the power phase done in the new garage to get the inspection out of the way.  Big thanks to Rocket who came over and taught me how to wire GFI breakers into the circuit box.  That project ended in an epic struggle to get a conduit successfully through an interior wall.  If I ever get that project finished, I’ll share all the gory details.  This guy needs some rest and relaxation – can’t think of a better way to do that than posting about my favorite night of the year!
Haunted Trail 2016

Yep, it’s finally time for the epic Haunted Trail night post (I could hear the cheering from all the way out here).  As the standard has become, this post is loaded with images – If you are on crappy bandwidth like us, you will definitely see the lights flicker a bit once you hit the jump to see the full walk through.  This will likely not going to be a big text post – better to just let you experience the sights (sorry, haven’t found a way to bring you all the eerie sounds yet) with minimal distraction.

Haunted Trail 2016

Hit the jump to experience the full walk through (might want to lock the doors and turn on all the lights if you get scared easily ha)

Continue reading They Sense Your Fear Haunted Trail 2016 Pt 3 – Tis the Night

They Sense Your Fear Haunted Trail 2016 Pt 2 – The Layout

Sorry folks, I forgot to wish everyone a Happy Halloween yesterday.  I had intended to get this post out on Halloween but I ended up getting too involved with this year’s pumpkin carving and lost track of time.  The pumpkin turned out pretty good and you probably already assumed details will be forthcoming in a future post.  I am a little strapped for time tonight thanks to having to deal with our well going dry, so let’s get right too it.
Haunted Trail 2016
This is part 2 of this year’s Haunted Trail which I have affectionately called “They Sense Your Fear”.  Of course, the reasoning for that title will be a focus of a future blog – you should know how this gig works by now.  Part one of this series was all about the build part of the effort.  Tonight we will move into the layout phase.  Getting all the decorations down the hill is a big chore, but this part is where the fun and creativity come to bear.

Paul and I spend a lot of time laying out all the decorations to give the best experience for our guests.  One aspect is trying to make the trail a progression into terror.
Haunted Trail 2016

Hit the jump to see a bunch of pictures from the layout phase – many thanks to Ron for taking most of these shots.

Continue reading They Sense Your Fear Haunted Trail 2016 Pt 2 – The Layout