[Wildomar]

Toshiba Tombstone Progress

Here are some early photos of my attempt to use your standard electronics packing styrofoam to make cheap Tombstones. While it is somewhat cheaper it is way more time consuming since you have to get rid of the mold marks and packing blemishes. After several tries, I learned that your standard spackling paste works great and enables you to later sand to achive better shapes, finishes, and even fix any mistakes you have created.

The positive side to using this type of styrofoam is that many of the shapes are ready, literally out of the box. (Im funny) Nonetheless, its true... Tombstones arent always 2 inches thick, some are large and surprisingly wide so using the box styrofoam like this works reasonably well to vary the look of your cemetary.

Lastly there is a mixed blessing to the backless aspect of some of the stones. While they will have to be set in the cemetary away from the line of sight of the TOTs, they are better for hiding exterior lights, foggers, or power strips etc. I patched a few using scrap styrofoam and lots of spackle for up front placement.

Like I said, these are early shots showing some of the free styrofoam I acquired and then the basic shapes before cutting epitaphs and painting. I will post more photos later. :jol:

Toshiba Tombstones pictures by ScoutBucket - Photobucket

 

[edwood saucer]

I would call these experiements a great success. I think folks need to see the idea in practice - and it's worked.

I'll never look at packing material the same way again!

Good job.

 

[spokanejoe]

They look great. Nice job. I have used the white packing foam also. WHY? Because I am cheap. I leave the marks and dings... makes them look old. But I love what you have done with them.

 

[ScareFX]

Looking good Wildomar. Nice use of those freebies.

 

[Wildomar]

Thanks. I left a lot of the blemishes that looked as though it would add to the weathered appearance. However there were a couple that had asian text written into the foam so that, and the manufacturing marks, were removed. Several were also molded with square holes though the usable surface requiring me to take scrap faom to fill in the hole and spackle the patch. If you look closely in the photos you can see the square and rectangular patches (color change) on some of the stones.

 

[scareme]

Those are great looking tombstones. Hard to believe it's just packing foam. I've got a couple of smaller gargoyles. I've never thought to use them on tombstones. The picture really helped to see it.

 

[Wildomar]

Yeah, I should have mentioned that. The styrofoam ball and the Gargoyle were the only added items... I was working at trying to do away with the squarish shapes so I tried those out... not sure what will stay yet.

 

[gypsichic]

so how will you fill in the shadow boxes? i'm referring to the one that has 9 squares in it

 

[Wildomar]

That is actually the back of the TS so that one will be placed in the yard in such a way that it can't be seen from behind. These TSs were originally constructed to be background filler stones, but after cutting the epitaphs and such they turned out much better than I really anticipated. Actually in some cases, better than the ones I have built using the generally accepted foam techniques in years past.

As for filling in the backs, a couple of the ones I filled in using a few scrap sheets of styrofoam glued together and then spackeled the seams. Final sanding leveled the surface somewhat. I captioned some of the photos to indicate if you were looking at the filled in backs or not.

 

[gypsichic]

ahhhhhhhhhhhhh..................i seeeeeeeeeeeeee

 

[Wildomar]

Well, I finally finished my cheap filler Tombstones that were supposed to be easy and cheap. Yes, they were cheap, but a huge pain in the keester; however, they did turn out pretty good.

Also see the link below for all of the photos and their construction progress.

Toshiba Tombstones pictures by ScoutBucket - Photobucket

 

[Dr Morbius]

I merged your threads for consistancy. Those turned out fantastic! I really like the different shapes you got with that foam. Great job on those epitaphs too.

 

[Wildomar]

Thanks Doc! Good call on the merge. Nearly all the epitaphs were just whatever popped into my head at the moment. To save time with the dremel, most are fairly short names with simple words like Hanged or Burned to convey how they were killed.

The Lycanthrope one on the left has a half moon cut into the top that is lit up from behind so it looks like the moon is shining eerily from the Tombstone. Just something that went from a thought to cutting in about half a minute.

 

[Dr Morbius]

You are one creative guy! Thanks for sharing.

 

[HalloweenRick]

How do you cut out those epitaphs so exactly? I've been using a woodburner, and it gets nowhere near as nice on the epitaphs as yours. What bit for your Dremel tool are you using? Do you go right through the paper? Thanks in advance!

 

[Wildomar]

Actually I would offer that because my epitaphs look so perfect, they may not be the style to go after. I kept distressing the rest of the tombstone but somehow the text always had this real crisp cut to them... it makes the lettering look like it was cut last week but the rest of the TS has been subjected to centuries of weathering So your wood burner technique may actually be a lot better if it tends to produce uneven results.

But since you asked, I mostly used a 1/8-inch cylindrical bit (mine was a carbide tip, but that should make any difference) that had a flat bottom on it as opposed to a point or conical tip. That gave me a very flat bottom to each of the letters. I then used one of those dremel cone-gizmos that allows you to cut only to a certain depth (not sure what the doohickey is called). If you looked at the photobucket site, you should have seen the taped up lettering on a few of the stones. I then cut through the paper and just routered out each letter. It took a bit of time, approximately 45-min for each stone. Hope that helps.

 

[gmacted]

Those are incredible!

 

[DeadSpider]

those worked out really well!

 

[Wildomar]

Thanks! I like the greater 3D aspect of these Tombstones compared to my previous ones made from the standard styrofoam sheeting. So the trouble that it took to make these into viable Tombstones really paid off in that respect... kind of lent a greater authenticity to my cemetery. And the TOTs realy thought they were great so I guess it was worth it after all.