Steampunk Django: Coffin Build

The opening credits of “Django” play over an extended scene of the title character dragging a wooden coffin along a muddy and desolate stream bed. He drags this coffin around through much of the movie, about a third of the way through you discover that it contains a machine gun instead of a body. And just as the coffin itself is a plot device, the machine gun drives much of the rest of the story, killing scores of bad guys, killing more people and finally killing even more and acting as a distraction while Django escapes with the coffin now filled with gold.

But the coffin is not just a box. Aside from the general symbolism of death literally following Django around, it is representative of the death of his wife at the hands of the film's villain and the burden of revenge that Django drags to the movie's end.

And so, to do a Django cosplay you need to have the coffin. Since I was mashing up this steampunked cosplay with “Star Wars”, the idea of Han Solo frozen in carbonite transformed the coffin into a Victorian suspended animation unit.



Most of the cosplay could be brought together quickly but actually building the coffin was going to take a lot of work. And money. I figured I would be spending at least $60 just on the plywood necessary to build it in addition to other hardware. Not having a job, I held off moving forward with anything because without the coffin and without the money to make the coffin, the whole concept wasn't going to work well enough to justify the investment in the other parts of the costume. Yea, I know that sounds sort of backwards and you might think that the coffin would not be that important but, well, that's what I thought.

I considered cutting costs by using shipping pallets, which can often be scavenged for free, but that would require carpentry skills and tools I didn't have to work those pieces into something that didn't look like crap. Rather than making junk, I did nothing at all.

Then, entirely at random, I was browsing through Construction Junction and thought “Hey, they have old doors and random plywood in the back corner where I don't typically bother looking for stuff. Maybe I can find some way to save me $60.”

And there it was! Someone had received something shipped to them in a plywood box that they then got rid of. It was almost exactly the size I had sketched out. It was selling for $8.

After that, I got to work. Now, I could have used the simple, straight sided box designs I had seen at Old West shows and online but I wanted to mimic the coffin from the movie as closely as possible. That meant a lot of angles. If I knew what I was doing and had a decent table saw, it probably wouldn't have been too difficulty. But, again, being a complete carpentry amateur, and not wanting to mess it up with the no-margin-for-error box that I had to work with, I started with a cardboard prototype. I then tore the prototype apart to use as a template.

Additionally, not only was this going to be a cosplay prop, but I wanted it to practically useful for dragging my guns around at Cowboy Action Shooting events. That made it overall a little wider than the prop coffin was in the movie. This extra size was also appropriate in that I wanted the occupant to by lying on her side, something that requires something a little more spacious than a period coffin.

I have a hand circular saw and that would be good for cutting straight lines but I also had some beveled angles to cut. A table saw would be best but I didn't have access to one. I settled on the hand jig saw I had. The lines were not quite as straight as one would get from a circular saw but, to tweak the angles I was going to be using a file so the jig saw would be close enough.

I glued the pieces together and then used nails to hold them secure. None of the angled joints lined up the way a professional would have been able to do them but that's what putty is for. Lots of putty.

At a flea market I found some wheels for about a quarter of what I would pay for at the hardware store. I used plastic kitchen drawer handles rather than the nicer looking metal ones because they were cheaper and I could repaint them from the white to a brass color. My wife had a string of Halloween lights that I could use to simulate the hover effect and I drilled some holes in the bottom of the coffin to push the lights through.

The last major thing to do was the simulated occupant. Inspired by the River in the freezer scene from the pilot episode of “Firefly”, I wanted it to look like there was a naked woman frozen in the box, lying on her side (to conceal the naughty bits). More Django than Jango Fett, this is his frozen wife rather than some random bounty or Han Solo stand in. (At least, that's the general concept.) I knew I could use a sheet of plastic for the window, spray on a little white paint around the edge of the plastic to simulate frost, add some blue cellophane and it would, I thought, look really cool (literally and metaphorically).

You would not think that finding a picture of a naked woman on the Internet would be difficult but the pose and angle I was looking for was not to be found. Lying on one's side, but not in the fetal position, is one of the most common sleeping positions and there are countless illustrations and photographs of the pose but they are almost always taken from the side. Those few that are taken from the top are almost always illustrative of some medical analysis of sleep and thus the model is always wearing pajamas. Those models that are naked are also displaying their nakedness in either an artistic (and therefore awkward) or lascivious (and also awkward) position.

I found one picture that was nearly perfect but it was on one of those stock photo sites. The picture online was too small so that if I enlarged it to life size it would be terribly pixilated. And I was not going to spend the hundreds of dollars they wanted for the high resolution image.

I sent out word to friends as I knew some photographers and models, and even a few that might be willing to pose nude. I had one photographer friend respond to my inquiry but once I explained in detail what I wanted and that I could not afford to pay for high art I didn't hear back from him other than “Interesting.”

I finally found one picture that was as close as I could get. The resolution was a little low so when it was blown up there would be some pixilization but not too bad. The model was wearing clothes but I was just going to have to accept that. Finally, the photograph did not include her feet. This, I could work with, though.

I hadn't cut a hole in the top of the coffin yet as I was waiting to find the right picture. I figured that if I never found an appropriate picture, not having a window would be best rather than having the freezer appear empty. But before I actually cut the window, I needed to find the plastic. At Loews and Home Depot I found some plastic but it would cost me close to $40. I ended up going to Michaels's and looking at poster frames. They had a 24x36 poster frame on clearance for $8. To have a full window in the lid I would have needed 48 inches but since the photograph I had didn't include the feet, a 36 inch window would conceal that.

I broke the first plastic sheet. Whatever they use in those is very brittle. Well, when you purchase from Michael's they give you a coupon good for 40% a single item the next week. I got a replacement for under $5.

Next came staining. I wanted something light but because the color palate on the can does not necessarily match the contents of the can ended up getting something that was too dark and too red. It's not bad and not a disaster for being that way but not quite what I wanted.

As I was going to dragging this around with rope, I figured I would make it look neater is the ropes also tied the lid closed. I did that and immediately realized that I then could not open it without a huge production of untying the rope. Since I also intended to use this as a gun case for cowboy action shooting, this was going to be entirely unworkable. The solution I came up with was cutting the rope at lid joint points and than using a staple gun to hold the cut ends next to one another. The rope dies fray slightly at the ends but the illusion of the ropes tying the box closed is pretty good.

Finally, freezer controls. I searched a number of flea markets for period gauges and dials but couldn't find anything appropriate. I looked at the hardware store but none of the plumbing fixtures were the size I needed. I made some dials using medical sample container lids and the clear lenses from some welding goggles I wasn't using. Adequate, but not what I wanted.

The Carnegie Library has a MakerBot 3D printer and offers free printing. One only needs to pay for the plastic itself. Once I remembered they did this, I went on Thingiverse and downloaded a few files for a pair of steampunk goggles. I had the library print them slightly smaller to fit the lenses I had, and then delete the goggleish parts to make the dials. Add a little hardware and they look even better than I had hoped. $5.

I added some round vents along the bottom that I got from the Re-Use Store in Edgewood. The plan was to have fog rolling out of the vents. But when I tested it with some dry ice, the effect was barely observable, much like the hover-effect lights I installed. If the contest involved judges that carefully inspected the workmanship and props, perhaps it woulod be useful, but the typical walk-across-the-stage contest isn't going to notice.

All told, the coffin/freezer/suspended animation unit took me a month to complete. I don't know how much I ultimately spent on it but, with a bit of luck, it was significantly less that I expected. And, I think it looks pretty good. It makes the cosplay.