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Haunted Graveyard Project
October 26, 2015
A scroll saw project for a Halloween themed youtube contest.
Actually the haunted house beside the haunted graveyard could be the title. But that’s too long, so haunted graveyard will do. Simply Wooden Creations on Youtube had a Halloween themed scroll saw contest running through October. I haven’t ever done much scroll saw work, but I decided to do something and enter it into the contest.
I had a couple other competitions going on this month as well. The Summers Woodworkings
birdhouse contest in which I entered 2 birdhouses, the first was loosely based on the house depicted in Little House on the Prairie. And the second was a Jack-o Lantern birdhouse. I actually won a can of General Finishs top coat for that one. Then there was the Casket themed chisel cabinet For the Hallowood15 contest hosted by WOmadeOD. I’m still waiting on the results of that one. There are a lot of craftsmen in these contests that are far more skilled than I so I really don’t expect to win prizes. But with each contest project I learn new skills and get practice in on old skills. So prize or no prize, I win either way.
Well in this scroll saw competition, I decided to do a little Halloween scene of a black haunted house that resides next to a haunted grave yard. I purchased to poplar boards that were ¼” thick and used double sided tape to stick them together.
Note: I didn’t know any better at the time and used carpet tape which was a mistake. It worked ok if you go ahead and make your cut and separate the boards and remove the tape. However I left it on overnight and returned the next day, cut my window holes out, then proceeded to pull those to pieces of the haunted house apart. The double-sided tape, which was really carpet tape, had set to a more permanent bond with the wood. And the piece broke. It was a clean break, so I was able to glue it back together but I recommend you make sure when using double-sided tape for this purpose, you get the double-sided masking tape variety which will not adhere to the wood quite so well.
I decided on my measurements for the size of the haunted house, marked and cut the front, back and sides out on the scroll saw. Trust me, straight lines on a scroll saw are not easy cuts to make. Then marked where I wanted the windows to be as well at the door. The door was not to be cut out but was marked there as a guide for when I glued some stripes of wood as a door frame which gave the appearance of a door; which I later added a door knob and knocker to for a little more detail. Then cut out the squares that would represent the windows. Then I separated the pieces that were taped together.
Using the scroll saw to cut the angle on the top of the haunted house.
I cut my roof top, adding the thickness of the board (1/4") to the width of the other side so that it can lay over the other side at the top of the roof and still be an even overhang on the front and back of the haunted house. Then I attached a straight edged board to the scroll saw table to act as a fence and cut the tops of the front and back panels of the house to match the angle of the sides so that the roof would lay properly Then I glued the house together, added the fake doorframe and window frames. After the roof dried I went ahead and put masking tape inside the house, over the window holes and across the opening on the bottom of the house to keep paint from getting on the inside of the haunted house. I just felt the natural wood would reflect the lights better than if I’d have let black paint get inside. Then I spray painted the house black.
Next I moved to the haunted graveyard and began cutting out the grave markers and ghosts. I used the remaining pieces that I didn’t use on the haunted house and just freehanded the shapes of the grave markers and ghosts. Then I cut them out on the scroll saw. Sanded them a bit and set them to the side while I made the base to glue everything to. I cut the remaining pieces of the ¼” polar to length on the scroll saw. Marked where the house would sit; then marked a circle and cut a hole with the scroll saw that I could later feed a string of lights through.
I cut three strips of scrap wood to go under the base. Approximately one inch by whatever length you need. I also cut a strip of one by two poplar stock to the length of the front to hide the wires from the lights that would be underneath. I glued the two boards of the base to the strips making sure to leave a gap between the center strip of the 3 strips and the strip of 1x2 that would go across the front. This would give me enough room to feed the string of lights across the front of the base and onto the side with the graveyard on top of it. I clamped that together and let it dry. I didn’t glue on the front strip yet. I waited until I had decided where I wanted to drill the holes to fit the light through, though I doubt it matters if you go ahead and glue it on while gluing the 3 strips under the base. After that dried, I painted the base black. I then drilled the holes for the lights, then glued the 1x2 to the front and then painted it black.
While that paint dried, I glued some orange plastic over the windows on the inside of the house. Then I painted the grave markers and ghosts. While those dried I added the lights to the bottom of the base. Starting on the haunted grave yard side, sticking a light in each hole so that the light stuck up from the hole on the other side of the base, using tape to hold the wires in place where needed. I worked my way to the hole I had cut which would be beneath the house. After each hole had a light I folded the remainder of the string in half and fed that through the hole leaving enough of the string that had the female plug on it hanging out so if I wanted to plug a string of lights from another decoration into it, I could.
The pencil shaving and stained sawdust make pretty good dirt and dead grass.
I then stuffed the lights into the house, arranging them as I thought they’d look best, then glued the house in place and clamped it. After I was able to remove the clamps I glued the grave markers and ghosts in place. As it dried, I was reminded of the one quality of gorilla glue that I could usually live without. It expands as it dries and created some unsightly clumps of hard bubbly foam along some of the places I had glued. To cover this, I added more glue. Yup, in this case more was better, because I had saved some saw dust that had been stained to fill some gaps in dovetails. I mixed that with some trimmings from the pencil sharpener and glued sprinkled it over the glue. I was trying to simulate dead grass and dirt. It worked pretty good and covered the glue.
Just after I had applied the gorilla glue and paint.
Of course the same thing had happened on the ghost I had coming out of the chimney of the haunted house. But I had an idea; gorilla glue expands and gets all bubbly and ghost leave ectoplasm. So I dumped a bunch of glue on top of the chimney and added paint, kind of swirling in the different colors I had used on the ghost and kind of letting it run down the side of the chimney a little. The glue expanded as it hardened and made what, in my mind, resembles ectoplasm. After the gorilla glue and paint had dried. And that’s about it. I edited the video of the haunted house beside the haunted graveyard build and uploaded it to Youtube. Then I submitted it to Simply Wooden Creations Scroll Saw Contest 2015. The video of the build is below.
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