Zooter's Home Made Toombstones |
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 Shown here a selection of tombstones in various stages of completion. I can't take credit for the skull one, it's concrete and store bought. |
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Here's a close to completed M. T. Tomb, about 18" high. Needing some finishing paint. |
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Graves 1801 is a smaller - scale double wide monument. This is a shot with just the first coat of gray paint. Needing a bit of sanding, edging and other detailing. |
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Theo Later was actually the first tombstone. A simple rounded top design with simple lettering. Shown here in need of finish painting.
D. Parted is a pope's hat shaped stone that is also in need of a lot of finishing. This stone features an idea I had about incorporating fancy architectural features that can be bought at Home Depot in the millwork section. An easy and fairly inexpensive way to add fancy elements. |
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Here you can see a close-up shot of the millwork piece, that, when all dressed up and blended into the monument, should add a nice bit of decoration. Will be playing with the painting and aging of this. The brush marks are not intended to stay, just left over from the first coat of paint on the decoration. |
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Here's a cross in production. Just a big hunk of foam right now, but with routed out detail. My first attempt at using the router for added coolness. |
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Same cross after a bit of sanding to take off the sharp edges created by the router. You can see the oops marks from the clamp marks on the top and bottom. Those will have to go. This cross has been a lot of trial and errors. Used spray foam rather than liquid nails to put this piece together. That didn't work that well. Actually it held great, but was much more difficult to cut with the wire cutter than the styrofoam. |
| Here's a shot of the cross above just before routering, or is it routing. Eitherway. You can click on the photo for a close up. |  |
| Here's the home made wire cutter. Cost about $15 to create. Here's a link to the site that gave me the idea DIY Wire Cutter. Got the cheap soldering gun at Radio Shack (Depot and Lowes didn't have one this ghetto) You can click this pic for a close up too. |  |
| Used 8 gauge copper wire stripped down to one wire for cutting edge. I've got two tips that I found useful. The tip mounted on the gun is the main cutter. I modified the original design by mounting a piece of PVC with ziptys between the leads. Found that I needed something to keep the wire stiff. By itself, it would contort out of shape when heated. (Which could be useful for cutting nicely imperfect edges. The other tip is for cutting grooves for the mounting tubes. Works great. Click for close up. |  |
You can see the mounting tubes here. Just 1/2 inch PVC set into the fat layer of foam. I use the attachment above to cut a groove into the fat PVC. To get the shape, I just wrapped the wire around a piece of pipe. Simple. For mounting, pound a coupe of rods into the grass and slip the monument over it. For the crosses, I mounted the tube up to the cross part for stability. |
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| Additional Toombstone References... | |
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