What's all this, then?

Each Halloween season, when the Greenwood Reaper inhabits my yard, people ask me “How did you make it?” and “What is it made from?”.

Since I’m making a bigger and better reaper I figured I’d make this blog to answer those questions. This is also a way for interested parties to ask questions and see the progress of the project.

The only regular time I spend building is on the week-ends, so it’s likely posts will appear early in the week.

The posts appear with the newest on top, so if you're new to the sight scroll to the bottom to read the beginning.



Enjoy.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Oh boy. Well, I’m in full panic mode now… That’s what I get for slacking and doing other projects. It’s almost September and I feel like I am waaaay behind. I did get a lot done this week-end though.

The first reaper relied on the posts that extended from his feet (and acted like stakes) for stability. I wanted the new reaper to have something a bit more. I decided on making a full on re-enforced concrete foundation that would lie below ground level.

I decided to repurpose the leg trusses from another project (Mary Annette) for the base structure. Since the whole design is a tapered, triangular column, the base is, of course, a triangle.














Using the same super heavy-duty steel pipe that will end up being the new legs, I cut off three 9” sections and welded them to the corners of the base.






…then gave the whole thing a coat of RustOleum. Since I am not the most patient person I typically do not use RustOleum (it takes longer to dry than Krylon), but in this case I really needed something that was gong to work well on top of surface oxidation and armor-coat the rebar while underground.





After about an hour of digging (and sweating and swearing) the hole was ready for the metal base. It took a while to get the base plumb in the hole, but with help from Connie we made it work.





600 pounds of concrete later the base was done.