[theVanyr]

See photo:

We are building a cauldron (the milk gallon is for scale). It has the cardboard frame, shrink wrapped, and mache' to form it. Which brings us to the monster mud part (this weekend).

The question is... How many layers of MM and cheesecloth do you think this beast will need to be solid enough to play with? We don't intend it to actually hold water or anything daft like that, but we would like to keep it around for several years of cauldron witching business.

We would appreciate your thoughts and wisdom!

 

[theVanyr]

Bumped off the first page on day one!

 

[OctoberDream]

Its hard to say. I only used 1 coat on my reaper and that was several years ago. But then again I don’t "play" with it. Maybe if you use drylok after you MM it may hold up a bit longer.

Then again if it is that big and you real want it to last maybe just use good old fashion concrete. It might be cheaper than MM and Drylok. and I think it would hold up better.

Good luck.

 

[CFD318]

Do you plan on getting in that? lol What ever you use I'm sure it will be heavy! Great job on it!

 

[UnOrthodOx]

None?

Seriously, I would suggest sticking with more mache, and maybe doing some paper clay over your current frame.

Stolloween is, of course, the source to go for more info on that. http://www.stolloween.com/?page_id=209

That said, I've done mud over mache in the past, myself in the form of a pair of 6 ft towers. They lasted 3 years, and only died because that final year we had a downpour on Halloween, and they were right near a downspout in my gutters, so spent the entire night in a puddle. Pretty irrecoverable after that. Would have probably lasted 5 years without repair or such circumstances. But then, the cauldron would seem to lend itself to collecting water in adverse weather...

 

[theVanyr]

Thanks everyone! A lot of food for thought. We will weigh our options, though at the moment I am leaning toward a Monster Mud and fabric base coat with a cellulose MM/paper clay outer layer to help round out the ridges left from the cardboard armature.

Thank you for the Stolloween link. I keep forgetting about his tutorials... don't know why, they are some of the most well written TUT's out there.

Any other takers or thoughts?

 

[theVanyr]

It is late in coming, but thank you! All of your advise and UnOrthodOx's prop mudding thread saved my butt on this cauldron project two years past. It occurs that I never said as much. Here is the pre-mud build, and here is the prop in use this past year. We put a 20gal stock pot inside with hot apple cider and dry ice to serve the parents when they drag their kids up to our house. Not too many people take us up on it, but the numbers grew from the first year to this past year! On the other hand a witch with a fogging ladle isn't confidence inspiring I suppose.

Thanks again!

 

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So how did you create the frame? I know you said you shrink wrapped it, but what did you use to get your shape?