Topic: cheap-o reacher arms

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Posts: 8

first a little back-story in case you missed it:

my son'sfriend, Dillon, is a clown in our haunted trail. he's a big boy, andlast year, his costume literally shredded off him. we had to find abigger one for him this year... so i posted on HS, looking for ideasand LabMama helped me out. she had a great colorful cloak-the base forthe costume!

while looking online for more clown stuff, theReacher costumes really appealed to Dillon. but we're a very smallnon-profit trail meaning we have basically 0 dollars to spend... so igot to thinking... maybe i could make some reacher arms from mostlyrecycled items.

so i started with this: 3 feet of corrugated tubing we had used last year as giant spider legs.

i added 2 bicycle squeakers to them:

had to fix 1 with hot glue, one of teh Chihuahuas thought it was a chew toy!

inside the tube:

attached

next i took plain mechanics gloves and stuffed the fingers firmly with shredded paper

nexti took some bike spokes, curved end 1st, and inserted them into the fingers. this firms them up, and allows you to bend them as you see fit.

the rest of the glove was filled with Great Foam and allowed to set up overnight

the tubing was the same width all the way down, so i slit it and used zipties to create a taper to the arms. the hands now neatly fit inside thetubes. a little extra room is no problem, use a piece of foam sheetingto take up that space.

use several long screws to attach teh hands to the tubes.

i selected some loud material at the fabric store, and plugged in the trusty hot glue gun.

material attached (and Danny finishing lunch, lol)

i couldn't help it, i had to buy a yard of orange pom poms to go on it. after all, it is a clown, the louder teh better, huh?

noticethe contrasting stripe? i had a tad left over so i added that lastminute. total cost of item purchased specifically for this project:less than $7.

*edited to add*

got 2 pics of them 'on'