Dementor hands how to part 1.

This is something I meant to get round to writing about last year, but time (as is usually the case) got the better of me.

We decided that for Halloween (last year) we'd have a Harry Potter themed party and so we set about making various things, one of which was a dementor, nothing too elaborate but enough to give the feeling of creepiness they have in the films.

After looking at various pictures (and watching the films) we came to the conclusion that there's not much too them in terms of detail, which is probably what makes them creepy as your imagination kind of fills in the blanks.

One thing you do seem to see quite clearly is their hands, whether reaching out or fingers moving round door ways, so I got hands and my wife did the head, you can read how she did it here (opens in new window)

I've broken this how to into two parts as it did take some time, there are probably much quicker and easier ways of doing this.

Here are the hands on the dementor -

In black and white because, creepy.

We hung the whole thing once it was done in the stair way so that when we opened the door to trick or treaters it would scare the crap out of them give them a jolly good scare.

Here's one of the hands close up -

Looks like dead skin, well a bit.

Okay, so to make these hands is easy enough, you'll need the following - 

Wooden dowel (I used 12mm thick dowel)

Strong garden wire.

A drill bit the same diameter as the garden wire (around 2.5 to 3mm should be fine)

Loads of white and black tissue paper (or you can use paint instead of black tissue paper)

Pva glue (lots of)

A small section of a plastic milk bottle, or similar.

Some string.

And super glue (or just use the pva, why didn't I think of that?)

Masking tape.

Basically what I did was to cut the dowel into what are roughly the bones of a human hand, I've added extra onto each piece of dowel to elongate the hands.

If you look at a picture of the bones in a hand you can see that they start quite long and get smaller towards the finger tips.

My dowel cut into enough pieces to make two hands - 

Now to arrange into something that might become a hand.

Dowel arranged into rough hand shapes - 

Stay with me, they do start to look better in a minute. 

To join each bone I marked the centre of each end of the various bits and then drilled a hole into each one, this was so I could fit a smaller length of wire into each hole.

Centres marked - 

I wasn't too accurate with this.

Holes drilled, a vice makes things easier - 

Again I wasn't too accurate.

Once I'd got that done I then set about shaping each bit of dowel into something that sort of looked like a bone, I did this using a drum sander in my post drill and my little bench top sander, but you could use a sharp knife or files, or even just wrap lengths of string round each end of the dowel to create a knuckle shape.

Sanding begins (and takes a while) - 

It's quite repetitive.

What I was trying to do was create a knuckle by sanding the wood away in certain places, the idea being that once all the bits were joined together and the tissue paper was applied they would look like long fingered hands.

After what seemed like an age I'd got all the bits shaped how I wanted, next I had to join the bits together to create four fingers and a thumb, this is what the garden wire is for.

I cut small lengths of garden wire and stuck them into one end of the dowel, then I stuck the next bit of dowel on to build up the finger shapes.

All fingers and a thumb - 

Almost there.

The good thing about using the garden wire is that it gives you a small amount of flexibility in the hands and as such means you can pose them in different ways.

To join the fingers together I drilled through the ends of the longest bits of dowel and fed a piece of garden wire through, to stop things sliding off I bent the wire over at each end and cut off any extra, then I bent the wire until I had a more hand like shape.

To stop the fingers moving about I used string with a bit of glue on it wrapped around the garden wire to keep them separate.

String fixed and glued - 

Simple but effective.

And after a bit of fiddling about I had what look like two hands, that I can pose into creepy positions, all they need now is some decoration.

Main structure finished - 

Very handy.

And that was part one, part two is on how I decorated them and made them look a little more sinister so keep an eye out for that.

Part 2 - http://the-shed-and-beyond.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/dementor-hands-how-to-part-2.html

Thanks for reading.