ROUND TOP COFFIN


For 2008 I decided to build a round top coffin with a pneumatic sitter. Nothing like having ghoul sit up scream and scare the ba-geebers out of your unsuspecting guests.

A special Thank You to BooCrew Production. Boocrew makes the best products for the money. These guys know what they are doing take it from me. The workman ship is unchallenged in quality attention to detail and durability. They use only the best materials for the frames and Humphrey's pneumatics. Their tech support is fast and accurate, (They understand you most likely never really used pneumatics before.) You can find the link for Boo Crew Below

I am not the best carpenter in the world. I enlisted the help of a old school friend of mine who happens to be a journeymen cabinet maker for this project. I wanted a coffin that looked like the real deal but did not come with the cost of real coffin.
John and I started this project without any plans. I started out with the tops. The hard part for me was figuring out the radius for the tops. And how to make it all even. What I ended up doing was figuring the width of the top- 25" and the height 6"at the middle and 3.5" on the ends. I then took a piece of metal that was straight but flexible. I placed the metal across the width of the top at the 3.5" marks on the ends. I then forced the middle to the top keeping the metal at the ends 3.5" mark. John then traced the radius with a pencil. the piece was then cut out slowly and 1/8th inch and then sanded to tolerance. We needed 4 pieces so used the first for a jig to cut the other three. This gave us consistency for the top. Each piece was cut from a pine board that was 1"x25"L x6" At this point router was used to rabbit cut 1/8" deep a 1/2" wide on one side of the radius cut. This will be used to lay the 1/8th" door luan flush with the ends.
Then I had to find coffin hardware. After allot of searching I found the answer at Lee Valley Tools I was able to find the handles, casket hinges and all other casket hardware. They were reasonably priced and fast with delivery.
The rest of the build really just went with building an ornate box that would fit the top. I think that part, I will leave to your taste as we are all artists one and all. After that was all complete I used a gravity fed spray gun and sprayed two coats of primer and two coats of high gloss black oil paint. I did not change the consistency of the paint for the sprayer. I used it right out of the can and the finish was excellent.

I will be adding more quality pictures after the 2009 season as the pictures I have of last year really did not turn out all that good.

Unclemikeyshaunt.com