Trading tips for dark displays and prop production.
#91487
A few roadside sellers / farmers etc have mentioned or been pushed toward a permanent roadside marker for their pumpkins, often sitting on a verge, with a need to be visible in overgrown grass, therefore weatherproof, vandal proof in some shape or form.

I tweeted ryan to see if he recalled any threads along the lines of this, but all I could remember was a long silent, US military chap using a plasma cutter on empty cannisters.

Farmers still typically have big ole metal drums, tough & once cleaned out properly good for bbq's cavaletti's etc.

They're big, cheap, tall, weighty, with room for more weights inside to make em more thief proof.

Have been playing around with stencilling & cutting drums a while now for fire purposes with a bit of added interest for winter parties etc, but they don't quite fill the bill of interchangeability...

Therefore, (& this is the rough idea to be improved upon)


Steel drum, sandbags to weight it.

30W led floodlight inside (mounted securely) with a waterproof connector to the outside.

cut out 1 or 2 large portions of steel but enough to leave the bulk of the structural integrity intact for a long life & any mis-haps in storage or horseplay.

Long wing nut capable bolt sets X4 per side, or more if deemed required.

Clear, Transparent plastic sheets, art shop type, which can bend to shape round outside of barrel.

dark plastic material (as above) as a second layer upon which the Windowkin stencil is cut into.

(wing nut bolt sets drilled to hold with no gaps your inner & outer sheets for the led floodlight to silhouette & advertise with.)

If two back to back stencils are required then a carefully positioned stiff white painted sheet of weatherproof & fireproof material can be inserted to divide light whilst hiding the other stencil, (inner lining)

A simple solution for the rough edges of a cut out drum could be to line em with plumbing pipe foam compressed or otherwise.

with a strong enough cool led flood in use you could always try drilling a sealable cut out at the top of the drum (central) in order to place 1 real or stuck down foamy kin to use excess light to silhouette it & make it blindingly obvious what is being advertised as for sale in the fall season.

The wing nut holders can be loosened off to make for interchangeable stencils to keep the display stencil fresh & talked about by those who pass by regularly.

In theory (as this all is currently) you could also, for improved daylight use create an outer "box" extending like an eye piece on a camera, to keep stray light out during daylight hours to increase visibility & create darker edges so you max out direct approaching line of vision as to what it is with minimal distraction.

Hope you get what I'm on about, cutting into oil drums is fun but "samey" ..this way allows you to refresh with a selection of stencil cut Windowkin designs on plastic laminate material with less labour intensity burn out dremel bits etc.. hopefully utilising existing farm type stock material keeping costs down, you can then dump a pack of pre-cuts upon the person & get them to change the stencils with whatever frequency they wish in a matter of seconds...

Yes you can improve on this by perhaps making the outer edge extended to slip a stencil into a slot to assist with stability & speed up interchangeability to keep on trend with frozen or whatever kid-appeal you need to do to get by, we all know how fickle trends are , ..it's there to be honed accordingly.

ALTERNATELY / Let's go "large" with that

Many farms / businesses have palletised containers filled with liquids in either black plastic or semi transparant white appearance plastic containers delivered, little used, but easily stackble as theyare made to be moved by tines on a tractor / telescopic transporter, when empty can be manhandled into place by 1 or 2 people.

Same principle, plenty of scope & a difused light colour changing box, white is nicely visible in the day, large & strong enough to either pile pumpkins on top as added display or use as a entrance marker (with a difference) & really upscaled pumpkin stencil pattern opportunity.

Was in the supermarket yesterday at the till smiling at a kid (that in itself is scary) who was bouncing a colour changing liquid & glitter filled plastic ball on the checkout), the opaque nature of many of these containers should act as a visual enhancement & light difuser, of course smaller vessels are available to be used, right down to the humble milk jug as we've seen demonstrated here before as lit markers, ..same principal. ..all you need to consider is your fixing options, however these would be wonderful markers for a hidden track to a farm off a main road! "glaringly obvious, but without the glare"

Keep costs low, re-use & recycle.
Last edited by GUS on Mon Jul 06, 2015 6:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
#91490
Not a bad Idea!

It would also be very cost effective while having an excellent look to it!

Good to see ya Gus. My brindle girl is having a rough go for the last week and I was thinking back to our conversations about the health of our little ones. I need to try everything I can. Makes me sad.