Like many ideas, mine was brought to the light of day glowing with pomp and pageantry on a restaurant napkin. Well, to be more accurate, on the back of a paper restaurant place setting that had grease smudges on it and looked a lot like the picture on the left only the lines weren't nearly as straight.

  In it's initial design, the chair itself was going to incorporate two 8" diameter Tesla Coils (sisters) at the top of each rear seat post that would send a blazing blue bolt of electricity to each of the two orbs while the unfortunate guy taking the brunt of this torturous death was leaning forward and shaking violently. Then when he sat back upright for a moment between full body spasms, the bolt of electricity from both coils would zap to a metal head cage he was wearing, really giving him something to whine about.

-Tragically-

   That couldn't happen. The chair was going to be literally filled with on board electrical gadgets to make all elements of this scene come to life and I learned there was really no practical way to fully isolate those onboard delicate circuit boards from being fried into puddles of carbon each time the coils were triggered. So this element had to be scrapped. However, among the other animations our prop will have in common with the Shake and Bake, we would be able to create smoking skin at the feet and wrists, and, going a bit further I replaced the Tesla coils in the imagineering stage with a chaotic fiasco of electrical insulators and heat sinks that would also emit excess smoke created by the dead ground created when shocking a person to death. The re-draw of the new chair would then look similar to the drawing just above on the left here. Not as dramatic as the blue lightening bolt-like spark from the coils, but it would have some redeeming value in our finished product.

   Take a look at the prelim drawings closer by clicking directly on each thumbnail for a larger image.

   Since this project has been engineered on computer, I was cautiously optimistic that I could build the chair and pedestal to the dimensions shown here before prototyping the dummy's movements and dimensions with a real life mockup and it did work out very well. To the left and right you will see draftings of the chair including its dimensions. The construction is made up of 3/4" plywood and is entirely hollow. This gives us channels throughout the legs and arms and even under the seat to run our wires and fog piping.

   In this photo on the left you will get a clear look at the seat, which is a separately constructed box. Since this chair is all wood construction and will be subject to rather demanding vibration and concussion from the animations of our dummy, we need to use this as our anchor of rigidity for the entire build. It is important to note that the box is built with a face frame on each side for just this reason. You can either make a face frame using solid wood, glue and dowels or face frame screws, or using the simpler method of cutting out your opening in a single piece of plywood such as I will be doing here. Any of these three will produce the same desired result, a laterally stable box to base the rest of the chair's features on. This is where our pneumatics will be to animate our thrashing guy as well as an isolated area to mount the speaker. We will be employing two air rams inside, one for the chest and arms and one for the legs. Our hopes are to completely eliminate any noise the air rams and exhaust might have, so this box will need to be sealed off for operation. This is why the need for a floor as well as the separated area for the speaker. More on that later. Once the prop has been completed, the side openings will be covered up with 1/16" polished diamondplate aluminum that will kill 95% of the sound from inside.

  The pedestal shown on the right is where the fog machine, the expansion chamber (based on the system that makes the Fog, On The Rocks work so much differently than other coolers) and electronics will be stored. Not only will this space be handy for our purposes of keeping this prop entirely self contained but it gets the view of the scene up higher to pronounce the animation to the viewer's eye. You will notice here that the back of the pedestal is hinged, allowing access to the electrical and other items it will store inside.

  I have decided to offer the actual cut out list I used for mine for your benefit. I've tried to get each piece that was actually used but there will be a couple of minor pieces you will have to add to it such as the braces used inside the pedestal that the door closes against and the ones just under the front legs of the chair that will allow you to take either side off without the pedestal's top sagging under the weight above. If you find any sizes here to be off by even 1/4" please email me so I can make the corrections here.