![\"\"](\"http:\/\/karenrsavage.com\/blog-images\/dor01.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Terry Pratchett is one of my favourite authors, and so when I saw this little guy at Joann’s, I just had to get it and turn it into the Death of Rats. Here’s how I did it:<\/p>\n
He’s made of some sort of plastic, so first I used a heat gun on his arm, to get it into a better position for holding the scythe. First I twisted the lower arm to get the hand in to the right orientation, then I did the shoulder and upper arm to lower the arm a bit, and finally I heated the hand and wrapped it around my dowel rod to get a nice grip. Since he’s going to be wearing a robe, it doesn’t matter that his bones are now a bit deformed.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/karenrsavage.com\/blog-images\/dor02.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
For the scythe blade I took an empty tea light, cut out the bottom and then straightened out the remaining strip. I free-handed a blade shape on a little piece of card, traced it out on the metal strip and then cut it out. I used a couple of dabs of low-temp hot glue to attach it to the dowel rod, which I had already cut to size and painted a darker brown.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/karenrsavage.com\/blog-images\/dor03.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Uh-oh, he’s lost his head! I discovered that he was made in pieces and screwed together at various points. This was super convenient, because I wanted the blue pinprick in the eyes effect and this made life a lot easier. I took the head apart, drilled a hole in each eye and then dabbed a bit of black paint around the holes, and inside the skull (the theatre tech in me insisted).<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/karenrsavage.com\/blog-images\/dor04.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
For the lighting, I got a 3v blue LED, a battery case for a 2032 battery and a small slider switch. I cut a hole in the back of the head for the switch. Once I get the hooded robe on it, it won’t be noticeable. After testing my connections, I soldered everything together and added a couple of daubs of hot glue as insulation (couldn’t find the electrical tape), and I glued the battery case to the inside of the skull.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/karenrsavage.com\/blog-images\/dor05.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Here he is with his head back on.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/karenrsavage.com\/blog-images\/dor06.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
I still have to make his robe, and I’ll post a finished picture of him once I’m done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Terry Pratchett is one of my favourite authors, and so when I saw this little guy at Joann’s, I just had to get it and turn it into the Death of Rats. Here’s how I did it: He’s made of some sort of plastic, so first I used a heat gun on his arm, to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[326,28,13],"tags":[327,328,329,330],"class_list":["post-2026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crafts","category-pics","category-random","tag-crafts","tag-death-of-rats","tag-discworld","tag-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karenrsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karenrsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karenrsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karenrsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karenrsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2026"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.karenrsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2033,"href":"https:\/\/www.karenrsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026\/revisions\/2033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karenrsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karenrsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karenrsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}