Maurice's Contraption

[ResilientRosie]

Ah!! Help! Anyone have any suggestions on this one?

I need to build (or rent, but I've been unable to find a rental without having to rent the entire show package) Maurice's Contraption for our upcoming production of Beauty and the Beast and I am at a total loss. I'd like it to look really great, but be somewhat simple to build (no crazy difficult wiring needed). A plain rolling box just won't cut it, but we don't have a golf cart or the like either.

Anyone have any great ideas that you're willing to share?

Thanks!

[chausman]

We had an old wooden cart that had a big pot on it and and some fans and lights hooked up to a car battery. Then you can add any sort of odd looking thing to add to it.

[shiben]

Wow, this sounds like something I would love to build because you can just kind of go crazy. Get your Dry Ice, your fans, your lights worked out to power, and then just kind of have fun adding things to it. I would get a shipping crate (not a conex, but a wooden one), stain it, put it on some wheels, and go to town decorating it. maybe get some pipes and elbows, put some pipes around the outside?

[firewater88]

What part of Michigan are you in? I could direct you to a school that we rented it from near us (west michigan). It has a battery operated log cutter on it. Nice wagon.

[Jamyo]

We are also doing Beauty and the Beast next year, what school did you rent it from Firewater? We are in Charlotte, MI. Thanks!

[mvp1114]

This is a little late but someone might be able to use the info.

We started with a wood-handled wheelbarrow frame (took off the dump box) - that gave us handles, a wheel, and legs. We then attached a triangular platform to it and put sides on, like a low wheelbarrow. We put a painted milk can on next that we put a container in for dry ice. We took a double-bitted axe, ground off the edges, and drilled the butt of the handle through enough for an axle, and took a boat winch apart for the ratchet, wheel, and crank and ran a rope to just under the axe head, and ran a long, thin spring down to the front of the contraption. This let us crank up the axe (crank was out of view most of the time), have clouds of dry ice "smoke" coming from all the openings in the milk can, and the axe could flip down with enough velocity (not very much) to "chop" wood billets that were pre-sawed and held together with a little bit of gum.

We figured this had to be pretty "home-made" looking so we then had fun. We had old-fashioned square boltheads and nuts sticking out all over, a huge old railroad wrench to turn them, and every rickety metal can we could find hanging off of it (thank you farm auctions!).

This was one of the more "fun" doohickeys I've been able to build with my kids.

Mike