# Faux Electrical Fuse Panels



## pennywise (Aug 5, 2008)

I got to thinking about what What I would need for a basement/maintenance room type of scene in my haunt. I knew I wanted a few fuse panels with blown fuses and if possible I'd like to add Flash Crackers in one of them. Anyway, inspired by Allen H's Prop radio equipment video I decided to make the panels out of cardboard, but it wasn't until Christmas, when my kids got Reese's in a plastic candy, that I knew how I was going to make the fuses. Anyway, here's what we need to make this:

- A couple cardboard boxes (we recently purchased a French Press from Amazon and the boxes worked perfectly.)
- Several empty Reese's Peanut Butter cup candy cane tubes (or any clear plastic tubes you can find
- empty applesauce containers (for the second panel I made)
- hot glue
- various paints
- small pieces of colored electrical wire

Step 1:

Take your cardboard box and cut the flaps of the top, but do not throw them away:









Lay the flaps down on the table:









Hot glue the smaller flaps sideways across the longer flaps (just as they were when they were still attached to the box):









You could also do this step while the flaps are attached and then cut them off, but I wanted to reverse them.

Next, cut open the back of the box. We need to access the inside for this step. Decide how far down inside the box you want your panel to be and then hot glue it into place. I eyeballed it so it's not perfect, but since this is a static prop that won't be under close scrutiny, it didn't matter.


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## Allen H (Feb 13, 2010)

I cant wait to see it! Im so glad you adapted the original concept. My favorite quote is from a famous samauri "from one thing know ten thousand things" way to implement it.


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## pennywise (Aug 5, 2008)

*Step 2*

Now for the secondary panel.

I started with this box:









and placed my applesauce containers about where I wanted them. You can lines on the box where I tried to measure and place them evenly spaced, but I went with the eyeball method instead. I just traced around them once I had them set:









Cut these circles out, but leave a lip. I cut inside the circle at about 1/4 inch. Again, eyeballing, because its faster lol. It helps to cut the circles in a pie shape like this first:









Then just cut the wedges off. to end up with something like this:









At this point I test fit the applesauce container in the hole to see if it fit. Cut out all the holes but do no glue the containers in yet. A quick tip: you can take a pencil eraser and remove the print from the applesauce containers.


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## pennywise (Aug 5, 2008)

*Step 3: The Tubes*

This part wasn't at all fun. I took the tubes:









and soaked them in warm soapy water for a couple hours to loosen the paper wrapping. This worked somewhat, but still left sticky residue. If you can get goo-gone or something, maybe that'll help a lot. Anyway, remove the paper as best you can, then you are ready for painting.

Sorry, I didn't get any pics of the paper removal process or the taping off of the tubes in preparation for painting. Basically I again eyeballed where I wanted the fuse ends to be and taped off the tubes leaving about 1 1/2" on each end.

I spritzed flat black spray paint into each tube. I wanted them to look like blown fuses. Then I took a metallic silver and sprayed the ends of each tube. I followed the immediately (didn't let the silver dry) with a couple of rust colors. I ended up with this after removing the tape (some of the rust color didn't show up in this pic:


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## Warrant2000 (Oct 8, 2008)

Looking forward to seeing the result as I have a laboratory power panel and hope to add to it.


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## pennywise (Aug 5, 2008)

*Step 4: Painting*

Step 4 is where we turn ugly cardboard boxes to aged, weather old fuse panels.

I wanted a blueish-gray color on these, but what I had on hand was a light blue oops paint from Home Depot. I covered both boxes with 2 coats:


















Repeat the spritz of black spray paint with the applesauce containers as well:









I sprayed black around the holes for the "meters" to darken them up a bit:









I hit the main panel with flat black spray pain in all the corners and dusted the whole thing with black and green and a little rust color. The dusting is so light it doesn't even show up in the pics:


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## pennywise (Aug 5, 2008)

*Step 5: attaching fuses*

The final step. Again, I eyeballed everything. So, as with the applesauce containers, I laid out the fuses where I liked them, then one at a time I ran a bead of hot glue down the fuse and stuck it onto the panel. I had 4 large tubes, and 5 small tubes (from Reese's Pieces):


















Next, run a bead of hot glue carefully around the lip of your applesauce containers and slide them into the holes from inside the box. Then for extra security I ran a bead of hot glue around the containers.

Finally, take some scrap electronics wire and tape a bunch of strands together at one end, and hot glue to the the panel:









More scrap wire taped up and hot glued to the fuse panel and you have a finished blown fuse panel:










I may not be so good at writing up tutorials, but I wanted to share this project with everybody. It was cheap and didn't take too long to accomplish. I'm hoping that other people will start to think outside the box (pun intended) when it comes to props. These techniques can be used for countless props. For example, I bought some woodgrain drawer liner paper, fashioned a box and from double-walled cardboard, covered it with the paper and turned it into an electroshock therapy machine.


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## pennywise (Aug 5, 2008)

That's great quote, Allen! You've actually inspired a lot of my haunt with your YouTube videos. I have made several things from boxes now, the hand extenders inspired a whole costume which is in the works, and just tons of other props that are in the works. Thanks.


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## Zurgh (Dec 21, 2009)

Looks good! I love it when old style electrical works appear in haunts... it can add a bit of realistic ambiance to a scene. 


pennywise said:


> ...I eyeballed it so it's not perfect, but since this is a static prop that won't be under close scrutiny...


That would probably fool me under the circumstances.


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## BioHazardCustoms (Aug 5, 2009)

Very nice! You could probably mount a strobe light and a speaker on the back and get the same effect as a flash cracker. Very good job though.


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## pennywise (Aug 5, 2008)

Hey I like that idea of the strobe and speakers..I got a bunch for a couple bucks each at Kmart after Halloween! Thanks for the compliment guys.

I think I'm going to add a few dripping rust spots to the panel too.


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## pennywise (Aug 5, 2008)

Forgot to mention that the secondary panel with the empty gauges is suppsed to have flickering lights inside it too. Another good use for my red strobe lol


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