#DIY GRIM REAPER SCYTHE HOW TO#

I used a mix of real images and some artist’s drawings that had that scary look I wanted to replicate. THIS is the key! Building something from the ground up is truly unique and you never have to worry about running into anyone wearing the same costume.ĭownload several images from the internet as reference for the ribcage, skull, arms and overall look that you want to achieve. Building something like this does take an investment and I budgeted about $500 for this costume and built everything from scratch.

#DIY GRIM REAPER SCYTHE HOW TO#

You need to determine how to do all of this with what you have lying around your house or plan on spending a lot of money to get the materials you need. I want to see FEAR!!! Have to be able to move quickly and quietly with good visibility so you can seemingly appear out of no where. Yelling and screaming does scare a few but mostly startles people.

The Second Goal: Make Reaper 2.0 scare everyone else without ever having to make a sound. Height – 8 feet tall, 3.5 feet wide, exposed bones, accurate proportions (cannot look goofy, must look like a giant skeleton), make sure there is no human qualities visible. The First Goal: Make Reaper 2.0 extremely intimidating! Some people are just not afraid of the dark so this needs to either intimidate or highly impress the brave souls first. Last year I introduced my old reaper costume to the masses and it was a major hit at this park and I finally had the motivation I needed to build Grim Reaper 2.0. I’ve always wanted to improve on my Reaper but it was never worth it until I started working for a local haunt in Massachusetts last year. Even took 2nd place at a major Halloween party in Salem Massachusetts. Over the years I had constructed a customized Grim Reaper costume that lasted over 15 years. This is the finished 8-foot grim reaper as it appeared during Halloween 2003.In 1998 we started having Halloween parties for our kids and The photos from the first year are not web worthy. There were three main objectives in the design of the prop. At eight foot tall, it is big but it can fit inside a normal room if required. I wanted to be able to position the scythe and hands in different ways according to the set. We do not have storage space for large monster-mud styled static props. With those requirements in mind, here's what we can up with. The grim reaper is made of simple, easy to find materials. The frame is constructed of 1-inch Schedule 40 PVC pipe and fittings. I'm a proponent of having proper proportions when constructing human-like props. For an armature 96-inches tall, the shoulder width should be 23-24 inches to maintain a human-like scale. Here's a great calculator that can help with proportions. Two 11-inch pieces of pipe are used for the shoulders. The pieces are connected together with a 4-way fitting. A 45-degree fitting is attached to each shoulder pipe and an end cap is attached to each 45 degree fitting with a short 1-inch piece of pipe. A 9-inch piece of pipe is used for the neck and a 4-foot section of pipe is used for the top part of the body. A 2-foot by 4-foot piece of hardware cloth is positioned over the neck and enough wire is removed to allow the neck pipe to just slip through. (Hardware cloth is usually found next to poultry wire or chicken wire in the home improvement stores.) The hardware cloth is then bent down to form the chest and back areas. The edges of the hardware cloth were covered with duct tape to prevent the costume material from snagging. The bottom of the hardware cloth was overlapped and secured with wire to create a narrower bottom. Two of the four arm sections are made from 15 inch sections of pipe with an end cap on each end. The other two arm sections were made the same way but were each 12 inches long.

The arm end caps were attached to the shoulder end caps using coat hanger wire. The coat hanger wire was placed through two small holes drilled into an end cap. The wire was looped back on itself to keep it from pulling back through.Ĭoat hanger wire was also used to form hands that were slipped into latex gloves. The fingers were a little shorter than the gloves but still provided the ability to 'grip' the scythe. The hands were attached to the end cap on the lower arm using the same method as the other joints.Īn old christmas tree stand provides the base for the prop. A three foot section of 1.5' PVC was mounted using the stand's 4 screws. The 1-inch 'body' pipe was just slipped down into the larger pipe.

Diy grim reaper scythe