Wesley's Weekly HOW TO: Prop Chains
This week is Chains. A very simple prop with a lot of uses, whether you want to have a dungeon scene and need to have some prisoners chained up, or if you want to restrain a monster onto a table, or even if you just want to make a movie about gangs and need a "street weapon" that you can wave around and stage a fight scene with, and have it not actually hurt people, then a prop chain could fit your needs.
Start out with a piece of cardboard, this is just something I cut off of a box that was just going to be thrown away.
Now, just sketch out the link on the cardboard to give you a cutting guide, like Erik's Ninja Star Tutorial.
Then just cut it out. I used an X-Acto knife, but you could use a box cutter, or some scissors. Remember to be careful or get some help if you don't trust your cutting abilities.
Also like the Ninja star, you can use the first link as a guide to cut the next link, speeding the process up a little.
And just cut a slit in the link, and hook them together, and now you've got your chain.
To pad out the links a little, I rubbed a little air dry clay on them, you could also use wood puddy, or plaster or something. But this rounds them out a little, and helps fill in the honeycomb chambers of the cardboard.
Then paint it, I used a mixture of black and silver to give it a kind of forged iron look, but you could paint it whatever color you needed.
And there you go. You could put a little hot glue on the slits in the links to give it more strength and make sure none of the links come loose.
wesleys weekly, how to, prop, chains, shackles, restraints, metal, links
What about the shackles and locks and other stuff that attaches to chains?
nice
I make stuff out of cardboard all the time, but THIS is AWESOME!
What would we do without ya wes?
Wow, they look so nice for cardboard, especially in the first pic. Pretty rad!
neat!
sweet
Hey we need you to do props for the drama department at school...You are the best. I so look forward to seeing what you do each week.
Nice Wes! Now for next week, you can do shackles. That would be awesome!
nice! this looks really good! keep up the amazing work! ho yeah, that "1st comment" stuff is stupid
cool. awesome prop. FIRST!!!