# Animatronic Toe-Pincher Coffin



## GhoulishCop (Sep 25, 2009)

Here are the two videos that explain how I made the animatronic toe-pincher coffin posted in the Showroom section.

It's 3/4" blue foam, a hacked reindeer motor, and a paint graining tool to create the illusion of wood.

Part I:






Part II:






As I note in the first segment, there really aren't any measures for the metal stock I used to make the lifting mechanism. I really just eyeballed it and cut the stock to size. I just happened to have found the exact correct size completely by luck.

Perhaps not wanting to ruin my luck, I haven't measured the pieces, but I'd say the small aluminum bar connected to the motor itself is about 4" or so in length while the larger arms is about 14" long, give or take. The ends were drilled out to accept screws to bolt it together.

Sorry there's no video of the coffin build itself, but it's 6' long, 15" at the top and bottom, and 22" at its widest point. It was glued together using adhesive caulk (though there was some joint failure in one place after it shrunk which I remedied by using exterior wood putty).

Additional support was then provided by screwing in 1-1/2" long drywall screws that were coated in a dollop of hot glue prior to insertion. There are probably 3 such screws along each vertical joint and numerous ones along the bottom to attach the sides.

The lid was made by carving out a niche for a 1x2 to fit along the entire length of one side so I could fasten the piano hinge to it. A similar notch was made in the rear sidewall. Both pieces of wood were held in place via the screw-and-glue method, though I used 2-1/2" drywall screws for that.

I believe the videos themselves provide the rest of the details on how the lifting mechanism was made and the faux wood grain was added to the coffin.

The entire project was probably around $25, if you figure about $12 for a 4x8 sheet of foam insulation, free paints, screws, and metal stock I had on hand, though they would cost about $10 or so if you had to buy them.

As I said at the beginning, when I can get my hands on another skeleton, I'll add that as well.

Rich


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## Lunatic (Oct 3, 2006)

Great piece GC! Nice how to. The faux wood looks great. It must be a super light prop. Nice job!


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## GhoulishCop (Sep 25, 2009)

Heh! Yeah, I can pick it up and carry it around under one arm, unlike the toe-pincher I built out of old 3/4" shelving I had laying around. That one's a bear!










Of course, the risk is the wind picking it up and carrying it away or getting damaged and nicked. There are trade-offs that had to be made, but portability is indeed one of the benefits.

Rich


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## Lunatic (Oct 3, 2006)

A brick or 2 inside the coffin will anchor that puppy in the wind.


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## goneferal (Sep 8, 2010)

Great job Rich. That looks great.


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## Fiend4Halloween (Aug 28, 2008)

Very nice coffin. Love the texture that you added..and for around $25, awesome.


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## madmomma (Jul 1, 2009)

Very cool Rich! What I appreciate most is not only the time and care you put into making the project itself, but the time you take video taping it with instructions. That's awesome.
How are you going to hide the alum stock arm mechanism with the opening/closing of the lid? Are you going to drape the inside with black cloth right in front of it so as to give it half-coffin appearance? How are you going to position the coffin itself...flat on the ground, on a support (blocks) or leaning partly vertical against a wall, etc? 
Thanks again for a great videotube project. You rock.


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## GhoulishCop (Sep 25, 2009)

Thanks all. I'm thinking of putting one of the small Walmart foggers at the foot of the coffin for both effect and weight. Still might need a cinder block!

madmomma, I'm hoping the black paint will hide the mechanism enough at night and the with a light focused on the skeleton I'll be putting in it will serve as a distraction from the guts of the coffin.

I should mention that I ended up swapping out the reindeer motor for a vent motor. The vent motor had been my preferred option all along, but I ran out of them and they seem to have disappeared from the marketplace at least at reasonable prices.

The problem with the reindeer motor came about when I attached the skeleton (Yes! I found a Walgreens skeleton in my storage area!). The weight was too much and the motor kept reversing when it felt the resistance and wouldn't open. It worked fine in the video, as you saw, because there was no weight on the lid. Even though I'll be using a foam skeleton and not the bucky since the foam is much lighter, I think I may still have encountered a problem.

Now it's possible I could have overcome the problems through a couple of avenues which I'll mention here in case someone wants to replicate this using the reindeer motor.

First, the reindeer motor comes with an arm already mounted. I had removed that but probably shouldn't have since the nub the arm attaches to on the motor has a flat part that keeps it from slipping when it rotates. That was one of the problems I encountered: as the arm spun, rather than rising with the weight it simply spun and the lid never came up. To counter that I attached the original arm to a piece of aluminum stock and screwed it in 2 spots so that it wouldn't do that and then attached the aluminum to the long arm you see in the video. So I got the benefit of the original design of the reindeer motor arm along with using the aluminum stock for strength and length.

The second problem was that I had originally mounted the motor in the middle of the wood panel, but when weight was added to the lid that had the effect of the motor trying to push the lid up from the back of the coffin so it would stick and not rise. It was an odd angle it was trying to push up from. The solution was to mount the motor towards the front of the coffin wall rather than in the center, that way the arm was always pushing the lid up from directly underneath.

Again, these problems didn't manifest themselves when there was no weight on the lid, but as soon as I attached the skeleton they showed up. niblique71 explained to me the problems and the solutions, then generously gave me a vent motor so I didn't have to worry about the motor going in reverse.

I can say the vent motor exhibited no problems lifting the lid with the Walgreens skeleton attached though it did slow down a bit. But as I said I'll be using a foam skeleton in the end so the weight will be dramatically reduced.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to post them and I'll try to answer as best I can.

Rich


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