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| Need a hand? How about hands with long, bony fingers that seem to grow out of a writhing mass of vines? Start off with a roll of brown paper towel. Tightly roll up a wad of towel, then wrap that in tight bands of duct tape until it's completely covered. The tighter the better, as this will make them stronger. You want your scarecrow to have a crushing handshake, not sloppy and wormy. Although...hmm... |
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I made my fingers extra long. They range anywhere from 12" to 16" long. A good 4" of each finger will become the palm.
Most of the fingers are bent to form claws. To keep a finger bent, I added extra tape to the bent part to hold it in place. Hold the finger bent, apply a piece of tape over the joint to hold it in place, then wrap another strip of tape around the whole thing to make it permanent. Shorter pieces of rolled towel go in between each finger to act as spacers. Extra spacers were added in between the index finger and thumb. To make the hand appear more natural, I rolled the palm as if the hand were holding a tennis ball (or a flaming Who - points to those who get the reference). Extra tape holds the hand in its proper shape. |
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More paper rolls form the "bones" that will extend out of the back of the hand and will eventually meet up with the mass of vines that will be his arm. To the palm I taped a 45 degree PVC angle piece. Now the hand can be mounted to the forearm. I chose not to cement any of the PVC pieces that make up his arms because I thought it might be handy to be able to disassemble them for storage. This ended up being a moot point after the vine mass was built around the forearm PVC, and the added weight tended to make the joints rotate toward the earth. Damn gravity. A scarecrow, hands on hips like he's waiting for a bus to take him to Olive Garden where he serves nights while he works on his interior design degree at the community college isn't scary.
I ended up drilling holes into the angle pieces and inserting short drywall screws to act as pins. The arms can still be removed from the shoulders simply by removing the pins, and they won't rotate. Make sure you get your angles right before you put in your pins or you'll have to drill your holes more than once. Use a variable speed drill and start slow or you'll walk your drill bit all over the surface of the pipe. |
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