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.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Back to simplicity

Well... some things work and some don't.


After two raisings, I have come to a determination: The method of raising the Reaper (illustrated below) works fine on paper, but does not work well in real life.


The biggest problem is that I can't get the pulley high enough to gain decent mechanical advantage when it's needed most. The result is that I need to raise the torso using direct muscle power. This is not good engineering.

There are quite a few ways to resolve this problem, I could rent a scissor-lift every year, I could build a crane on my roof, I could just leave the Reaper up all year round, ...or I could just eliminate the need to raise the torso.
The plan now is to simply weld the torso to the base, add some embellishments, and do strange and unusual things with it all year round.
Wish me luck.