I've been told there ain't nothin like a well-hung guy... I'll take their word for it.

This year, Daniel let everyone know about a great buy on pneumatic box pushers at the Surplus Center . 

Unfortunately, they are all out now, but hopefully the principle here will be worthwhile for someone.

I pulled inspiration from a couple of different places for this project... IronMan and LadyIron's Windshield Wiper Driven Hangman, Gorey's Kicking Hangman, DeathLord's The Lynching, etc... and then I just went and started building.

I didn't want a violent movement, more of a "twitching", so I thought putting a weight on the end of the pneumatic box pushers in place of the wheel would probably do the trick nicely.

One quick trip to the sporting goods store, a 3 lb "cannonball" lead fishing weight, a small sledge hammer, and 5 minutes of whacking later (Heh Heh... he said whacking), I've got my weight.

 

I was only planning on using a styrofoam wighead for the head, so I couldn't actually go and tie a noose around his neck... it would never hold.  So what I did was drill a hole in a board offset to one side, and then tied the rope to that.  That gives the rope a solid anchor, and the angle helps it look like he's really hanging from the neck.

 

Trust me... I did a lot of testing with this rig with the weights at different points, to see where the best movement could be gotten with the weight I had and the throw of the pneumatic.  The final positioning... well... you might see where the name of the prop comes from. 

 

And yes, the weight is just duct taped into place where the wheel used to be.  It's a fairly firm fit, so I figured duct tape would do the job. 

I cut out a bit of the neck for the wighead, and then mounted it to the board with screws and duct tape.  Why yes, as a matter of fact, I do use a lot of duct tape.  It's because I'm lazy.

     

 

Legs were simple... 2x2's hinged so they bend forward at the waist and backwards at the knee.

     

Arms are made out of 1/2" PVC.  The hands are going to be bound behind his back, and I wanted to get some natural movement with the twitching, so I put some "T" shaped 3/4" PVC joins at the shoulder blade equivalent, put the 1/2" PVC through that, and then put a screw in to keep it from coming back out.

                 

 

 

Hmmm.... a bit on the skinny side, isn't he?  Let's fix that.

I wanted to use chicken wire to flesh out the chest area, and leave enough room for the pneumatic to fire WITHOUT, um, having the movement in that region be, uh, obvious against the clothing. 

The only problem is, I know pneumatics... I know props... I know just how half-a**ed I build things... I was going to need to be able to get to the inner workings if this thing stoppped working, so it was obvious that I couldn't just staple the chicken wire to the existing board.

The solution is probably obvious to everyone but me, but I eventually figured it out. 

I took two extra wood strips, attached the chicken wire to them, and then screwed those into the main board.  If something goes wrong, it's just two screws to take the chest piece off.

     

After that, time for some padding (he has to fit my clothes, after all, and I'm well padded)

     

 

I won't detail how I padded the shoulders and legs because:

a.  I didn't take pictures

b.  It sucks

But hey, it got the job done.

 

Next: feet.  I was going to carve down a 2x4 to get the right shape and size, and then I realized that was way too much like work.

Instead ... foot-bondage! 

 I grabbed a couple of pairs of socks I had just threw away because they were developing holes, put them on, wrapped them in duct tape (yes, more duct tape), and then cut them off.

           

     

 

Voila! (not to be confused with viola... it's not a stringed instrument similar to a violin)  We have a foot form that will fit an old pair of my tennis shoes.

Hmm... ankles... I want the feet to hang naturally, and, if the movement is violent enough, to move freely.

Ok, a couple of 2x2's with joining brackets should do the job.  I set those up, put them in the duct tape double feet, and then sprayed Great Stuff Triple Expanding Foam in there.

           

     

 

I couldn't get a clear picture of this (and I'm too lazy to go out and try again), but I just attached these loosely to the 2x2's for the legs.

Next:  The hood. 

You can't go wrong with the classics, so a burlap hood it is.  Using my normal exacting attention to detail, I hand stitched the burlap using invisible stitches... over 200 on each side.

Yah, right.

Stapler

30 seconds

Finally, the noose.

As you might remember (those of us with short term memory loss from the 80's can go back and look at the top of the page), we already have a rope the guy is hung from.  The air line and solenoid wires run up that rope, attached with zip ties.

I basically just wrapped a second piece of rope around his neck, and then started winding it around both the existing rope and the air and power lines.  I've got about 8 more twists than the classic 13 in a hangmans knot, but I wanted to conceal the air lines as far up as possible.

The pneumatics are controlled with a Prop-1 Controller from EFX-Tech (a spinoff from Parallax)

I had already stolen some code from someone else and modified it for my Monster-in-a-Box (no how to for that... sad, isn't it?  I mean, I run HauntProject, and here I am building props without how-to's.  Pathetic), and it works great for this prop, so I didn't modify it any more.  The code is in a text file here.

I'm only using output 5 so far, so you can ignore all the other stuff that's going on in there.

I've got a sound board on order from Cowlacious, so once I get that, the prop will officially be done.

Here's the video

If that doesn't work, try going here