*raspy moans*
Workshed.
*clings and clanks*
That's right, you guys guessed it:
this Halloween build is gonna be
Ash's chainsaw hand
from the Evil Dead films.
Now as I said, you guys had a lot of great suggestions,
and I will get to most of them.
But we had several people request this,
and to be honest, it's one of my favourite film franchises,
and I've never built one before.
So, rather than build one completely from scratch,
which there are a lot of great tutorials out there
on how to build it using things like
an old gas can and some plywood,
or even like a Tide bottle or some kind of detergent bottle or something
and converting that into one,
I want mine to kind of work and because it's Halloween.
There are tons of Halloween stores and party stores that have these fake chainsaws,
And there's all kinds of coupons and stuff like that out there so you can get them pretty cheap.
So this one, actually with a coupon, I got at a party store
for about 26 bucks.
And what's cool about it,
*chainsaw rev noise*
Is it's got a working chain.
*chainsaw noise continues*
So what I'm gonna have to do is take it apart,
and see how I can get a fist in there without moving too many components around
so that it still works, I wanna still have the sound effect,
but I gotta be able to take this handle off and move the switch to the inside
so that I can operate it within.
Definitely gonna have to do some modifications to make it look a little bit more like Ash's.
His kinda swoops down...
Yeah.
Gonna have to cut some of this out.
Add a piece of sheet metal.
We're gonna have to build a metal handle and cut this one down, take this one off,
and...
remove this bogus pull cord, knob thing here.
Yeah. The other side....
the other side's pretty good.
I mean obviously we're gonna have to paint it up, dirty it up.
But for the most part, we've got a decent amount of work to do to it.
All right, so some of the other items we're gonna be using:
there's a scrap piece of sheet metal,
this wooden dowel,
some aluminium flat bar,
this 3-inch pipe coupling,
some various corner brackets,
this little toggle switch,
some various nuts and bolt and screws,
and, so far, that's about it.
This is what I'm going with, I hope you guys dig it.
Kinda dive right in and see what this sucker looks like inside.
All right so we just open that sucker up,
then you can see there's quite a bit of room inside there,
so it'd be easy to fit a hand.
and removing the switch out of the handle was a piece of cake; it'll pop right off.
The switch was still intact.
So I took my pipe coupling and put it to the back,
and traced it out with my Sharpie so that I knew where to make my cuts.
I also did the same thing on the top where I was gonna cut it down
to kind of give it that reduced look that matches a little bit more to Ash's chainsaw.
So using my plastic cutting bit on my rotary tool. I cut it out.
Pulled that thing off.
Then I went back over it after I finished cutting these out
with my sanding bit to kinda get rid of some of those rough edges.
But, hand fits. Good enough.
While I'm at it, I'm just gonna cut off that pull chain knob,
because we're gonna replace that with our own.
Yeah, get that thing out of there.
So I cut the bar down because Ash's only has his like, on the side.
His is cut down because we're gonna put the handle on the top.
So once I cut out the top piece, and it's got that kind of reduced look,
I'm gonna cut a piece of dowel; that's gonna be the inside of my handle.
Then I made some lines down the center of another piece of dowel
and I'm gonna cut it down the middle.
That's gonna be the top and bottom grip on the top handle
that we're going to cut and bend out of our flat bar.
And that's gonna go across the top of the chainsaw.
So I made some holes...
And the handles...
And then my flat bar, I just put in a vice
and bent it into the shape that I wanted.
And that looks pretty good.
I'm deciding how much I want it to come down,
I'm gonna cut a piece off.
I'm gonna need some of that flat bar to attach the inside handle,
so we have something to grip inside of the chainsaw.
So now I'm just cutting off my flat bar.
Lookin' pretty good.
I got my sheet metal. And it was thin enough sheet metal to where actually
I could cut it with a pair of hobby shears,
which made it a little bit easier to cut.
Now I've got my little brackets and I am measuring where to make my holes
on the chainsaw and the coupling.
The brackets themselves, I had to bend quite a bit
to kinda fit the contours of the chainsaw.
I also used some aluminium strap...
'cause it's a little easier to work with and easier to bend.
Once I made my measurements for my holes and drilled them out with my drill for my coupling,
then I attached my brackets with just a screw, a nut, and a little lock washer in there so it didn't back out.
Screw everything in snug.
And then make sure that everything is lining up still before I attach everything.
I'm putting another piece of dowel; it's gonna be my pull chain.
Sanding it down, drilled a hole through the middle.
I'm using a piece of rope that I had lying around the shop
to feed it through the hole for the pull chain.
The other piece of dowel, I screwed to that piece of aluminium flat bar we had scrapped,
And that's gonna attach to the inside of my chainsaw so I have something to grab on to.
I'm gonna attach the switch to the inside of that.
Once I have the handle secured,
seems to fit pretty good,
I'm gonna shoot a screw through the bottom into the dowel to hold it in place along with the bracket.
Any excess wiring that I didn't need, I removed.
There was actually a switch already in there that wasn't attached to anything,
so I just removed that.
All the other wiring, I taped using electrical tape
to get it out of the way.
and the switch, I used electrical tape to attach the switch to the handle.
Now the piece of plastic that I cut off the top, I sanded the edges down
so it still had that reduced look.
And then I reglued the top part to the chainsaw with some hot glue.
I drilled a hole through my piece of sheet metal where I can put my toggle switch.
And then I put the sheet metal in place using some screws.
Just on the sides.
I used various hardware to kinda give it a look like it was build out of scrap pieces.
Once everything is secured, I attached my pipe coupling.
I had to feed these screws from the inside so that the screws weren't digging into my wrist.
Also, that's the look the original one has, so...
Once I got everything into place and tightened everything down,
make sure it's secure,
I taped everything off that I didn't want painted.
I painted using krylon: I used a red gloss first
for the whole body of it.
And then went back over it with a flat, darker red to kinda give it that worn look.
Needed an oil and gas cap, so a couple of water bottle caps sufficed.
Using some black latex paint I had laying around the shop.
Watered it down,
and painted over all the crevices and cracks.
With it painted in those cracks, I went right over it with a paper towel to remove any excess.
This leave a really good dingy, grungy kinda look to it,
like it's covered in oil and dirt and stains.
Gives it a nice weathered look.
It's usually the paint job that sells any product.
I sprayed the chainsaw blade with a nickel finish...
and did the same thing with the wash.
Put black paint in all the cracks and crevices then immediately wiped it off,
to give it that dingy, gritty look.
*snaps and clicks*
*starts chainsaw*
Groovy.
All right, well there it is- Ash's chainsaw hand from the Evil Dead movies.
Overall I have to say I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.
It was a little more involved than I actually originally thought it was gonna be but, ah,
*chuckle*
Few things that maybe you guys didn't notice when I was building:
I needed a gas and oil cap for the top, kinda forgot about it.
But fortunately I drank a couple bottles of water while I was working
so I just painted the bottle caps and glued them to the top there.
The pull cord is kinda loose, I think it looks kinda neat when it's kinda dangling.
You could just glue it right to the actual chainsaw, but I like the way it kinda hangs a little bit
with the rope just kinda attached inside there.
I hope you guys enjoyed watching this build as much as I enjoyed building it.
It was a lot of fun and it gave me a great excuse to build one.
It's something I've always kinda wanted to do and never gotten around to,
so this gave me a great excuse.
So thanks guys for the suggestions,
and...
yeah.
Until next time, keep watchin', keep buildin', enjoy your Halloween.
Don't forget to look me up on Facebook at James "Jim" Jarosz,
And,
uh...
Yeah.
Thanks again for watching guys. You guys are awesome.
See you next time.