Thread: Help with Tombstones

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I need some help with my tombstones. In particular, making them stand --- solidly. I can't keep spending half my Halloween night dealing with the wind knocking them over.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

If they are made of foam. blue plywood to the back of the tombstone so that it covers most of the tombstone. I use an adhesive called PL300 (used for foamboard). Once the glue has dried (a few days) i screwed 2-10" pieces of 1/2" PVC to the back of the tombstone. I put one screw in the top and then a bracket on the bottom. I space the two pipes 10" apart. Once taht is done. Pound in rebarb spaced 10" apart and your good to go.

This Method is what i like to call "The Pod" Method. Named after the member that helped me solve that same problem. It works really well.

I use re-bar from Lowes or Homedepot to pound in the ground and drill mathcing holes in the bottom of the stones. I use 2 re-bars per stone for the wider ones and just 1 rebar for crosses.
or you could glue them to a piece of plywood for a base and just cover with leaves to disguise.

I had that problem with some of those inexpensive ones you find at WalMart, so what I did was get a 2x4 and cut the length the same as the bottom of the tombstone. Drill 2 holes in the board to fit a dowel and make holes in the bottom of the tombstone to slide the dowels in (the longer the dowel fits in the better it will stand, but you don't want to poke through your tombstone). When it fits like it needs to, base coat the 2x4 in black paint then use FleckStone (WalMart has it in the paint section) that is the shade of the tombstone and fleck it up. You can glue the dowels in for extra sturdiness. Hope that helps.

I made some of my tombstones using two layers of 2" foamboard. Before I glued them together I routered out a channel vertically and put a piece of 1/2" pvc in it. Now all I have to do is pound in a 18" piece of 3/8" or 1/2" rebar and slide it over.

here is what I do. first I gut two small grooves in the back about 2-3" and 10-12" from the botom about 2" wide then I use 1 1/2" x 1/4" lathing strips glued to the back with construction adhesive. once it is dry I slide zip ties into the grooves and zip tie them to 3/4" x 1 1/2 stakes that are pounded about 8 inches in the ground