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I went to a metal shop to have my
1/8" X 2" X 28" lever bent and an
axle pin welded on to it. Instead
of using a heavy 1/4" thick stock I
chose to reinforce the more
stressed section of the lever with
some 1/2" square metal tube as you
can see here to keep the weight
down. The small sections of the
square tube seen at the left end of
the lever were put there to achieve
another idea I was working on that
I abandoned, so you need not
address this. The precise placement
of the 1/4" diameter axle pin is
shown on the very first photo of
this how-to. This must be on a
perfect right angle to the lever to
throw your pop up straight up and
not at an angle. This is what will
need to be mounted next to the
bottom of your coffin. Cut out a 2
1/8" wide by 1" deep slot for this
positioned as shown also in the
first photo, "coffin11.jpg". Notice
that the dimensions shown there are
from the outside of the coffin box,
and not the inside of the walls. If
you measure from the inside of the
walls from underneath the coffin as
I am sure you will, the dimension
of where to place this cut out in
the floor is on center at 39 1/8"
away from the right, or pop up
side, and 35 7/8" away from the
left, or legs side. I bent two 1" x
2" mending plates to create a
groove in the middle of each to
attach my lever, sandwiching the
axle pin against the underneath
side of my floor.
 This photo shows how I attached the lever. At first glance you may not
notice, but on closer inspection you will notice there is an extension bolted to
the end of my lever to give me more throw. The reason this is there is because
initially I had more than 3" less leverage for my air cylinder to push against.
I found that although that arrangement allowed my pop up to travel to a vertical
position, this short fulcrum required a very high air pressure to fully execute
the motion. That caused the dummy to then travel at a very high speed on the
final 1/2 of his movement and the lever would slam hard against the stop you see
angled behind the lever. In order to get the air pressure needed down to where
the pop up would move up quickly but not violently slam once at the end, I had
to add this extension. That extra distance has already been added to this how
to. The dimensions you are working with have been proven to work well at about
45 pounds.
We can also see here the air feed to the ram. You can see the air
"in" comes from the brass fitting at the top of this picture. That is
them routed immediately into an air regulator so that you can hook up a
compressor that is set at a high pressure and it won't do any damage to your
animatronic. The air then comes out and into your air trigger. You can assemble
your trigger
here. The triggered air
then feeds to a needle valve that is simply used here as a bleed off valve so
your dummy will lay back down again after he is triggered. And then of course
the air finally is fed to your air ram. You can assemble your air cylinder
here.
I attached all these items directly under the floor of the coffin so I wouldn't
have a bunch of dinglewhompers dragging all over the floor.
 Here we pull out to show a view of the folding leg system. I had to build up
blocks of wood to flush with the bottom edge of the bottom of the kick plates to
attach the legs to so the mechanism would lock out in a vertical position. Then
the folding legs had to be cut off at the bottom of the center connecting
down rods that are flattened and welded to the bottom "C" pipe that
goes onto the floor. I had to shorten the legs about 6" and flatten the new
ends of the down rods and re-weld to the "C" pipe so the coffin would
be at a good viewing height. You can see I added 4 "legs" to the four
corners of the coffin so I could set it down in the legs-folded position without
damaging the extended actuation lever. Now that you can raise your coffin to a
good height to work inside of it, let's give it life!
 It isn't hard to stretch your taffeta tight and hot glue it to the
underneath side of the lid and inside the coffin. You won't need to line the
entire coffin, as the TOTs will never see down into the leg portion of the prop.
You'll need to put in your lining before assembling your dead body.
By referencing the second Cad drafting in this how-to,
"coffin12.jpg" under Blueprints, you will see how to assemble the
armature that you will bolt to your actuation lever. The armature will be
attached with the top of your lever directly behind the 4-way fitting. This
should place the shoulders of your animatronic 20" to 21" from where his
hips would pivot. Now that you have the PVC skeleton in place, we are ready to make
a man out of it.
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