Category Archives: Useful Sites

Useful Sites

Monday Morning Links

Fon Davis runs a company called FONCO Creative, which makes miniatures and models for film and television. He’s worked on some lesser-known films such as Matrix, Star Wars Episodes I-III, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Make: Believe visits his studio and posts some photographs and this video below. It is great to see a fairly young and high-tech company still embracing the use of models and miniatures.

You should see this “Death Row” router table; so-named because it was found in a prison woodworking shop where tools often need to be, um, improvised.

New York Magazine has this snarky look at how terrible the newspaper was in Back to the Future. Slate Magazine than has a rebuttal, calling the critique very funny, but very wrong. Both articles are highly entertaining; you might remember them the next time you need to make a fake newspaper prop.

Here is an interesting Instructable for making your own machinable wax. Machinable wax is a wax which will not melt or deform from the friction of a high-speed rotary cutter; it is useful for trying out a part on a CNC machine before you waste your real material (and it can be machined faster and without wearing down your tools).

 

Useful Sites

Last Links before the End of the World

Happy Winter Solstice, everybody! I will be taking off the next week or so for the holidays. Once the new year rolls around though, I’ll be having some pretty exciting stuff to post in the lead-up to my new book (coming February 26th). Until then, enjoy these links:

Here’s a great story and video about how a prop maker and a woodworker are collaborating on affordable prosthetic hands. Richard Van As, a South African woodworker, lost his fingers in a woodworking accident. He couldn’t afford commercial prosthetics, so he worked with Washington-state prop maker Ivan Owen to build his own prosthetic.

This is a nice little article about the Fulton Theatre scene shop (including the props shop), located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

I recently came across a forum called The Effects Lab. It is meant for special makeup effects, mask making and creature design, and has a fairly active community of people discussing sculpture, animatronics, casting and other skills useful to many types of prop makers.

Wired has an article and first in a series of videos on DIY mold-making; making molds with silicon rubber and casting in plastic resin is commonly used in props shops, and these videos are a pretty straight-forward guide to getting started. Of course, the whole “doing it in your house where you and your kids eat and sleep” is questionable in safety terms.

Here’s a fun and whimsical tale of the tools in a toolbox having an argument. Warning: do not read if you cannot stand puns.

 

Useful Sites

Friday Prop Notes

Tested has quite the in-depth interview with Harrison Krix, one of the top videogame replica prop makers on the Internet these days. They delve into his process for building a prop, his workshop setup, and how he got started. Harrison has also contributed some photographs to my book, if you are interested. By the way, Tested is a website run by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman (of Mythbusters fame), and it has a lot of other cool stuff inside, such as this video showing some models Adam Savage has made for films.

Just look at these color photographs of Paris in 1914. I love the signs and lettering on all the shops.

I love the show Parks and Recreation, not least because Nick Offerman is an honest-to-goodness woodworker. The show also regularly features some fun and memorable props. Entertainment Weekly has talked with prop master Gay Perello about her five favorite props from this year’s episodes. You not only get to see some imaginative props, you also get to hear the challenges involved and the process in arriving at a solution for all of them.

An interesting page came through the Prop Masters list this week. The Museum of American Packaging is a photographic collection of thousands of product packages, mostly from the mid-twentieth century. You can call it “doing research” if you want, but I would look at these pictures even if I didn’t have a show set in this time period.

So you’re doing a show about physicists or mathematicians, and you need a blackboard filled with equations. Do you start making things up? Or do you head over to Alejandro Guijarro’s photographic series of physicist’s blackboards?

Useful Sites

Some Links for You

I like this photography series called “Much Loved”. The photographer took photographs of teddy bears and similar toys which have been cherished for decades by their owners, and wrote a bit about their back story as well. It’s great research not just for teddy bears from 50-70 years ago, but also for the kind of extreme distressing and aging that these archetypal and cherished “favorite toys” can go through.

Some more interesting research can be found with these color photographs inside Nazi-occupied Poland, circa 1940.

A whole subculture exists of prop makers making replicas of objects which exist in popular video games. Here is a great step-by-step build of a dagger from Skyrim. Though the end result is a bit “plastic-y”, the process shots show some interesting techniques and use of materials.

Finally, here is an interesting solution to the age-old problem of four-legged furniture that does not sit flat. When your tables or chairs rock, try trimming one of the legs… on the table saw:

Useful Sites

Final November Links

Hard to believe it’s almost December. Hope you enjoy today’s links!

“How to be a Retronaut” always has great vintage images. I like these recent photos of Anita Louise as “Queen Titania” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, circa 1935.

The Actors Theatre of Louisville is looking for an artisan/soft goods person for their upcoming Humana Festival (January through March). I worked there a few years back; the people are great, the shop is amazing and you get to do some quality work for really good theatre. Even the housing they put you up in is nice. All in all, Louisville is not a bad place to spend a few months. Also, this year’s SETC conference is in Louisville, so you’ll be in town for that (as will I).

Make Magazine has a holiday gift guide for woodworkers, but it’s kind of hit or miss. A $260 hammer? Orthopedic chisels? Personally, I don’t think novelty tools make good gifts for people who make things.

Vintage theatre footlights are needed every now and then, but they can be difficult to find. Ebay has one or two on occasion, but one frequently needs a number of matching ones. Costume Armour, Inc., makes a number of fiberglass and vacuum formed lights, and because they get a lot of requests for their footlights, they have set up a new webpage devoted to the standard sizes and shapes they offer, along with pricing.