Saturday, November 6, 2010

Deathtrap part IV - Shield, Garrote and Crossbow

When I think of a collection of medieval weapons I think of a shield among them.  A shield isn't mentioned in the script, and I don't think anyone but me wanted one, but that didn't stop me.  I found a great article at Yeoldegaffers  (http://yeoldegaffers.com/project_shield.asp) detailing plans for constructing a heater shield and I set about seeing how much I could bastardize it and have it still work.  Instead of using real plywood I used cheap 1/8" fiberboard and instead of using two layers I just glued some of the scraps left from cutting the shape to the back side.  I didn't bother with a proper shield press either, I just piled up whatever was close at hand (drill batteries, a brick, hand tools, wood scraps, etc.) in a roughly curved pile on top of a cardboard box and used a ratchet strap to bend the glued fiberboard down to the curve.
 Strategically placed squeeze clamps helped even out the spots where the fiberboard layers disagreed with one another and left gaps.


The main character in Deathtrap is named Sidney Bruhl. I did a little research online and found several coats of arms associated with the German name von Bruhl. I chose the simplest of them, and the only one within the scope of my painting ability: a white line on a blue background.
 The white line is 2" wide, the thickness of normal blue masking tape, I used a square to find the 45° angle and measured down from the top on each side to make sure it was reasonably even, realized it wasn't, and repeated the process several times until by sheer dumb luck it ended up even.



They needed a garrote, which took me a while because I had no idea what it looked like. Even after finally figuring out how to spell it google images just showed me confusing pictures of a medieval torture apparatus. Someone finally explained to me that it's basically a piano string with handles and I got to work.

It was the simplest thing in the world, all I did was drill a hole in each of two small pieces of dowel, stick ends of a wire inside and squeeze hot glue in to hold it.
I forgot to take pictures, but here's a link to a picture of a similar one.

The wire I used is called safety wire, not because it will break away safely if used to strangle someone but rather because it won't break when used to suspend pipes or hand paintings.  The hot glue though proved weaker than the actor's neck, which I suppose is a good thing because it saved me some police questioning and paperwork, and if there's one thing I hate it's paperwork.




The last item I produced for Deathtrap was a crossbow, which in hindsight probably should have been produced first because it is an important storyline element.  The assistant director showed me a picture of an Arbalest, basically a crossbow with a full stock like a rifle, and an idea was born.  I cannibalized a BB gun and cut a piece of wood to fit in the slot where the barrel would normally go. Then I glued two long pieces of fiberboard together with a little added scrap to give the butt joint some strength, and screwed that onto the piece of wood in turn screwed to the fake stock.


I punched a couple holes in the ends of the fiberboard and tied a string through them with sufficient length to reach back near the trigger group.

I put a considerable amount of thought into the firing mechanism and came up with a handful of fairly complicated designs. The solution I finally settled on though was very simple. The piece of real wood that I had to fit in the stock happened to have been used at work as a test scrap for a dado cutter.  A dado cuts a wide and shallow notch, a perfect notch for your thumb to flick the string free.
 The bent fiberboard applies very little actual tension so this mechanism (or lack thereof) worked perfectly






 Deathtrap's weapons wall

Thanks for reading!

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