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Herman Secret

A "Grave" Mistake

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8 Comments
by
Herman Secret
, 06-04-2008 at 05:30 AM (955 Views)
Well, I found a problem with my tombstone how to.

I have been working on my latest stone, I had the design worked out, had that all masked up.

For the lettering on the name, I printed out the name in a large font, cut out the letters and placed them in position on the tomb.

The rest of the lettering was put in place.

I was quite happy with the look of the design, etc, so proceeded to the next step.

Now let this be a word of warning...

I thought the spray paint I was going to use was grey... in fact it was white. Spraying white on to white creates this problem where you cant quite see where you have already sprayed.

Everything seemed to be going ok until I removed the lettering. Unfortunately in certain areas more styrofoam was removed than was required, resulting in some of the letters being eaten away by the chemical reaction of the paint.

I'm not sure if the stone is salvageable yet............

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Comments

  1. Muffy's Avatar
    Oh Boy ...that sounds like a rough lesson to learn. I have not ever carved styrofoam yet but I have read in many places on the net how spray paint can mess up and eat the best of a carvers work!!

    Sorry that happened Herman

    Muf
  2. Herman Secret's Avatar
    It happens, or something like that... lol

    There is little carving done in my process, all the work is down to the spray paint eating the foam, I was just over zealous with the spraying I guess.

    So next time I am gonna make sure I have a darker paint than the white of the foam.

    Anyways I may have salvaged the piece, by using Spackle to build up the letters that got eaten away.

    I will post a pic or two later on the progress thus far ....
  3. Herman Secret's Avatar
    OK, I may have saved the day and the tombstone... after a bit of work, some Spackle, paint and a little patience this is the finished article



    I'm sure the paint effect could be better, which is something I am still working on, but at least I can say that I have completed at least one project
  4. Muffy's Avatar
    Oh My God Herman that is just to perfect! Oh it looks wonderful...that is a project to really be proud of! It looks so real!

    How much time do you have invested in it?

    Muf
  5. Herman Secret's Avatar
    it took about maybe 3 hours to mask out, apply the lettering and do the spraying then another 3 hours in total to do the paint job (waiting for each coat to dry)

    With Drying times for the spraying painting etc, I would say that one could be done in a day ... mine was done a hour or so an evening after work.

    I think what took the most time was the drafting a design, and transfering that over to the full size project, making sure that the design was equal on each side.

    Maybe I should do an how to on how I achieved an equal design ??
  6. nightbeasties's Avatar
    Very nice! I especially love the style, but it's realism is fabulous.
  7. ryanlamprecht's Avatar
    I am getting ready to make my first tomb stone. I think I am also going to use the raised letter look as well, letting the paint eat the Styrofoam around the letters for the etched look. What I was thinking of doing is using clear adhesive shelf paper; the kind that you line your kitchen cabinets with. It's like a really wide piece of plastic tape. From what I remember, it’s about a foot in width. I used this a few years back to mask out flames on a guitar I painted, and it worked really well. I painted the face of the guitar the color I wanted the flames to be, the I covered the whole face of the guitar with the shelf paper, then drew out my flames on it, then cut them out with a razor blade. When I was finished, I simply pealed the shelf paper off, leaving the flames in place. Then I painted the guitar again with the color the guitar would be, and then pealed off the remaining shelf paper to reveal the flames. This may work really well to protect letters in Styrofoam from the spray paint. Has anyone ever used this for making a tombstone?
  8. raistlin_majere's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Herman Secret
    OK, I may have saved the day and the tombstone... after a bit of work, some Spackle, paint and a little patience this is the finished article



    I'm sure the paint effect could be better, which is something I am still working on, but at least I can say that I have completed at least one project


    Oh wow!! Nice job!!