Projects & How Tos
I have had many requests on how to do an animated display and how I created some of my props. Below are guides and information on how I created my display. I plan on making a few more tutorials in the coming months when I get some free time.
Behind the scenes tour
Below is a behind the scenes tour of the display. It includes a lot of information about the arches, megatree, and how things are set up. Runs almost 30 minutes.
Arches
For my arches I started with 1" PVC pipe that was 20' long. I took an old "Tater Twister" appliance (you can find many on ebay) that I had sitting around and hooked it up to the PVC pipe so that it would turn around and I could easily put on Christmas lights. Click Here to see a close up of the attachment I made that hooks between the tater twister and PVC pipe. It is made by taking a piece of metal and bending it into a U shape and then making the same shape hole as the drive shaft on the tater twister.
I am using 9 channels/sections for my arches and each section has 200 mini lights. I made my own extension cords using SPT2 wire and ran the cords parallel with the PVC pipe and allowed the Christmas lights to cover them. I started in the middle of the PVC pipe and worked my way towards the ends. I ended up with about 7 inches of bare PVC pipe on each end and cut off 4 inches on each side so the total length is now 19'4".
There are 9 channels/sections for my arches and each section has 200 mini lights. I made my own extension cords using SPT2 wire and ran the cords parallel with the PVC pipe and allowed the Christmas lights to cover them. I started in the middle of the PVC pipe and worked my way towards the ends. I ended up with about 7 inches of bare PVC pipe on each end and cut off 4 inches on each side so the total length is now 19'4".