Post #784225 by kahalakruzer on Thu, Feb 22, 2018 8:02 AM

On one of the nights after work, I had the idea to make my own version of an Asmat ancestor skull. I have a wheelbarrow full of concrete skulls on the side yard that I cast for a flaming-skull-lava-rock-fire-pit thing we do at our yearly luau, so I grabbed one of those, some craft concrete and dye, and some cowry shells and went to work. As tempting as it was to go out back and cut the actual tusks from my pet pig in the back yard, I made the boar tusks out of scrap wood.



After everything was cemented on and glued up, I ran a mix of paint and shellac over it all to give it some definition and aging. I still need to make a shelf for it, but seeing as it weighs a ton, I need to do some actual engineering to ensure that it doesn't come down on some unfortunate passerby. As of now it just sits on the bar top in the store.

And here's the day two installation. I got all of the trim up, all of the bamboo up, a coat of varnish over everything, and as you can see, the A-frame installed. I forgot to get pictures before, but I made the puffer in fish float lamp with a cool hand made glass float that I found with a perfect hole cut in the top already. I had to remember how to tie up the netting, but got it all worked out eventually. Bringing back my early tiki days.

As you can see, none of the doorways had actual doors in them. I found out on day two that neither of the side doorways were going to have doors installed. That became a bit of a conundrum. The back wall was going to have a door, but it just had to be designed...and built...and installed...and decorated...and it all had to be done by the end of the next day. Needless to say, I wasn't getting much sleep that night.