Deathtrap

This is one of what will soon be several very backdated posts. Starting this blog has been something I have meant to do for a long time but it's been too easy to put off.
Back in October, I was asked to help construct a set for Deathtrap at the local high school. In Deathtrap there are more murders than there are characters and they required many uncommon weapons including a garrote, maces, battleaxes, daggers and blank-fire revolvers.

Since I had only a vague idea of what those weapons actually look like I consulted google images.  Here are some of the better hits:

Over the next few days I began to notice how certain of them bore a resemblance to scraps of wood or pipe laying around the house... hmmm....


Part I.  The Flail

For the ball I found a some toy softballs at a local toys r us.  They sell balls in a sack. I can't help but wonder if that's a subtly dirty joke.

I started by folding and taping a piece of cereal box paperboard to make a conical shape for the spikes

I cut off the excess and folded (and smushed) a piece of paper into the cone. The paper is just an expendable buffer to make the cone reusable.

Filled the paper covered cone with hot glue nearly all the way to the top, set the ball on top of it and held the two together until the glue cooled.  Once the glue hardened more completely I removed the paperboard cone leaving a spike of solid glue covered in paper.

I eventually made more paperboard molds but discovered that my glue gun (30 watt I think) takes as long to heat up as two spikes to cool.  I don't think it makes much difference in this case but I use multi-temp glue in a gun set on high. I experimented with placing the ball and spikes in a freezer to cool but it didn't seem to make a big difference. The engineer in me considered stratification of the cooling glue and contamination of food, but found these to be negligible.

I marked what I thought would be a good layout for the spikes on the ball with a marker and glued them on with ever lessening regard for those marks until I had something truly brutal looking.

Once I had all the spikes I wanted I ran warm water over the spikes and gently rubbed the excess paper off leaving a reasonably smooth and paintable material.

I found a dowel and a couple feet of cheap home depot chain. I forget what they called it, galvanized or anodized or something like that. I purchased it based on its shape and weight because I didn't want a very heavy chain to interact poorly with the very light hollow spike ball.

I drilled a hole the size of the chain in one end, stuck the chain in and put a screw through the end link. I later filled the hole in with hot glue to prevent the chain from rattling.

I liked the look of the wood shaft with metal handgrip I saw on google images so I stained the part of the dowel that would remain exposed

It was at this point one of my ideas turned pretty awful. I had to secure the other end of the chain to the ball and I thought I could use expanding polyurethane foam to fill the inside of the ball and hold the last few links in there. I bought a can of Great Stuff, at considerable expense, and proceeded to create something similar to a baking soda/vinegar volcano.  I drilled a hole the size of the chain, inserted the chain and sprayed the Great Stuff in and 85% of it came right back out. It didn't even come close to filling the ball.  I ended up solving the problem by cramming bits of urethane back in once it was dry and sealing it off with my old standby, hot glue.

This photo really doesn't do justice to the mess but it shows a little of the crap that had to be carefully scraped off the spikes.

After that I glued rings of paperboard around the top and bottom of the shaft to begin to simulate the metal grips. Then it was time to mask and paint.

The middle part of the handgrip was made of the same paperboard but painted black and wrapped in mesh sandpaper before being spray painted silver with the rest. Mesh sandpaper or sanding screen is designed for sanding sheetrock because it lets the dust come through the screen instead of getting trapped underneath. I have little concern for its designed purpose though, when I'm not using it as a grille for small computer fans it makes an interesting effect when spray painted through.


I tried out a new "hammered" spraypaint, which uses several colors with dissimilar solvents to create a distressed look. It's supposed to hide surface flaws, like those baseball stitches you can see clearly here. Yeah... so much for truth in advertising

On the plus side, the trick with the screen sandpaper worked well.

A little black paint drybrushed here and there helps lead your eye off the stitches and makes it look like it's been through a couple fights in its day.

Thanks for reading!