Dead is heading out!

Jody and I got to enjoy the Canadian long weekend, which was a lot fun for us. It did make me a little late posting the tombstone final build though!

 Once our scenic mud had dried (or almost) we spent a bit of time removing some of the texture. As great as I though it looked, it was a little too pitted to pass as a real limestone headstone!

I used Aspire and our Techno to V-carve the text portion onto the front side of the stone. This was done with a high spindle speed, and low feed rate. I didn't want the thin coating on the styrofoam to chip out. A little was okay, but too much would have been very bad for this! In the end, it came out as perfect as I was expecting.

We used 2 coats of the same color glaze to add a little depth to the otherwise flat finish.
The final step was to add 2 gentle passes of speckle paint to all the faces in a very dark grey.

I couldn't help setting up on the lawn at the shop for a couple of quick pictures! I really wish it could have been old, and dripping with weathering, but the script called for a brand new stone :(
It looked really good, and surprised the neighbor when I asked for help lifting it onto the table!

All in all, it was a fun 2.5 day build!
I'm already drawing up different versions for everyone on my 'list' MU-HA-HA!
8)
JWO

Tombstone Tuesday!

Henceforth, the establishment decrees, that this day of July the 28th, in the year of our Lord two thousand and fourteen, shall forever be known as "Tombstone Tuesday"

Yup.....There it is.

The most recent gig is a tombstone for an upcoming film. Styrofoam is the obvious choice for this project.  I started with the vectors supplied by the Art Department. It was great that they sent everything to size! Our Techno ate through the job pretty quickly.

I used our little hot wire cutter to carve a couple of trenches on each side of the tombstone so I could glue in a piece of pvc pipe The pipe is there to accept the 2 rods that they'll pound into the ground on location. No worries if it's windy!

I used low expansion window and door foam as the glue. With a bit of water, it should be kicked in about 40 minutes.

After the glue had kicked, Jody got started mixing and applying our scenic mud. We tinted it grey to help out with the final limestone color we'll be applying tomorrow.

The base for the stone also got it's texture coat as well. We used the crinkled tin foil as a mold of sorts for the edge texture.

Once the mud had hardened up a bit, I rolled it with a heavy textured roller. Once that set up further, I was able to use the trowel to burnish the texture down a bit.
Tomorrow I'll get the text cut, and the final paint done!
Ahhhhhh...............Sweet, sweet Tombstone Tuesday.........
8)
JWO