Book Of The Dead - The Definitive Evil Dead Website

Before starting EvilDeadChainsaws.com I spent much of my spare time working on a range of special effects gags in my spare time, but I was sinking money into new ideas like there was no tomorrow, but not doing anything with them once they were finished, so not seeing any return on the money I was investing. Mid 2005 someone suggested I should try to sell some of my effects rather than just making & storing each one, then moving on to the next idea. After a few months thinking about it, I looked at setting up a website selling off-the-shelf special effects gags like retractable knives and such, but thinking further, I thought the best way to start out would be to keep it simple and concentrate on one really good idea, maybe introducing other items later on, and any profits could be used to fund additional new effects ideas without spending vast amounts of my own money.

I mulled the idea of making Freddy Kruger gloves from the Nightmare On Elm Street film series, which brought me in to contact with NightmareGloves.com run by Dane Anders Eriksen. Chatting with him gave me the idea to do much the same thing; find a different prop I could replicate and set up a website selling them. After some thought I settled upon the 'hand' chainsaw prop from the Evil Dead films. The only person I could find making chainsaws for sale at that time, was a guy in the US called Dan Roach, selling non-working replicas on eBay.com for $300.00 plus $25.00 shipping. They were made from modified original Homelite XL bodies. Other than that, there was no one else I could find, which was in stark contrast to the number of Kruger glove makers which were out there at the time, and the vibrant KOS Facebook Group of Evil Dead chainsaw makers around today. As an aside, I traded my very first completed chainsaw for a glove from Anders, to use in my 'Workshed' backdrop.

In May 2005, the grain store/shed outside my countryside house was rented for £40 per month to be used as a workshop, specifically for making chainsaws. I started out with a £2000 loan to set things up and buy the tools and machinery I would need. This included a pillar drill, bandsaw, disc/belt sander, metal lathe, and various hand & power tools, along with all the raw materials to prototype and make the chainsaws.

From May to December 2005 I prototyped the 'Workshed' model saw, until I knew I could make sell-able product, developing two grades; a non-working 'Standard' model saw selling at £350, and a 'Deluxe' saw with a rotating chain, retracting pull-start & smoke unit, for £750. I knew the only way I could make it work, was to make moulds and re-produce my own plastic resin Homelite XL chainsaw parts. Buying & modifying original saws was not an option, both due to the prohibitive shipping costs from the US to the UK, and the extra work involved with starting from scratch with each saw I made.

I bought the EvilDeadChainsaws.com domain name and uploaded a holding page on October 31, 2005, then formerly launched the website January 1, 2006, with the 'Workshed' saw only. The site's visual concept was drawn from the cover of the UK VHS release of The Evil Dead with artwork by Graham Humphreys, having grungy painted borders & vivid colours.

I wanted to create a suitable background for photos, and settled on a re-creation of a section of the workshed wall from Evil Dead II. Working from DVD screenshots & photos, the backdrop was constructed, as a wooden table, with a fake rear wall attached to the back. Wooden beams and shelves were added to the wall to roughly match the screen-shown set. It was dressed with various tools & props. I had intentions to make a different photo backdrop for each of the three styles of saw, at the time.

With the prototype 'Workshed' chainsaw complete, backdrop built and the website online, I started prototyping the second 'Cabin' model chainsaw in May 2006. This meant creating & moulding the raised lid, which was assembled from sheets of plastic glued together, with bodyfiller to round off all the sharp corners inside. It was then given a few coats of spray paint to make it smooth & shiny, and a few indents were added where holes in the castings would need to be drilled, and it was moulded in silicone with a fibreglass jacket. In addition, a number of small tweaks were needed to the 'Workshed' metal templates to account for slightly differing angles & fixings. It was intended that this model would come as standard; caked in grime & blood, which also had to be dry and not come off. The method I developed is something I've been asked about more than anything else.

The second photo backdrop, created in July 2006 for the 'Cabin' saw, was meant to depict the chainsaw lying on the sandy cellar floor, with light from the room above shining down through the gaps in the floorboards, and Ash & Henrietta's footprints in the sand, although I'm not certain this meaning came across to all the customers. It was made simply enough, with a sheet on the floor of my then-living room, sand spread on top, and a spotlight with pieces of tape to configure the light into strips.

The last saw model to be prototyped was the 'Medieval' chainsaw; completed in only two weeks in October 2006. The exact design of the saw in Army Of Darkness varies from scene to scene (and in some places, shot to shot) so this was somewhat of an amalgamation of the various designs where close-up & detail shots & photos were available. I wasn't able to think of a decent enough idea for a third background. Either Stonehenge, or on a plinth in a local ruined castle was the best I could come up with. Further, I wasn't overly happy with the 'Cabin' backdrop I had and was already thinking of better ideas. In the end, I decided to keep things simple and go with the 'workshed' background for all three saws, I just re-took & replaced these photos on the website so all the chainsaw backgrounds matched.

As part of that proposed revised 'Cabin' backdrop, I knew wanted to have the 'Book Of The Dead' in the background. I began by sculpting a cover in Chavant clay. Just before the cover sculpt was completed, I decided to stick with the workshed background and it was never finished as I was so busy with other things, and there was little point in finishing just to sell them as it would have breached Tom Sullivan's fiercely protected copyright. The clay eventually got used for something else. If I had finished it, I would have made a plaster mould, allowing me to produce liquid latex book covers, then I would have most likely scanned, printed & aged the pages from The Evil Dead 'Book Of The Dead' DVD, to reproduce the inside pages.

While the 'Deluxe' working saws were on the website throughout 2006, I only sold one; in November to a customer in the US. I thought I'd prototyped the idea enough, that even though I hadn't actually made one, I was sure I could. Suddenly I had an order to fill, and it was so much harder to make than I thought. It took a month to make and even once I'd got a completed functioning saw, the battery pack inside became temperamental as it heated up, so the saw would cut out sometimes. The battery pack had to be custom made to fit in the space. In the end I removed it and ran two wires to a standard battery pack which would be in the wearers pocket. This was far more reliable and made the saw lighter too. That experience made me realize how finicky they were to make, and I didn't relish the idea of making more, so I just removed the 'Deluxe' saw options from the website, and only sold non-working saws from then on.

It was only after I started, that I found out about the first Toronto run of Evil Dead: The Musical, and I emailed them in December of 2005 to see if they'd be interested in buying any chainsaws. The production run was well underway at that point and they decided to stick with the trusted props they already had.

In May of 2006, I was emailed regarding the upcoming New York production. I supplied two saws in September 2006, which was my first proper paid-for order. However, the immediate feedback wasn't great. As I had moulded the real Homelite XL body without much modification, some sections just weren't strong enough when re-created in Fastcast. The black side-handle was just inserted into the body-side, and had no support behind it, and they had snapped off both saws when the actor was dancing & swinging them around in the first week. I modified my design and sent them a third saw, adding a threaded piece of rod through the black handle, bolted on a metal support inside the saw allowing it to take the weight of the saw alone, as well as carving out some of the silicone in my body mould to thicken that section up. This was the first of a number of modifications carried over to each consecutive saw I made.

In July 2007, I was contacted by the Evil Dead: The Musical in Toronto. They bought two 'Cabin' model chainsaws, with a few modifications. The mufflers were made solid to make them much stronger, and the wristbands were fixed much wider than normal. I had been told that as my previous New York saws were too heavy for the actor to dance with, they replaced my real guide bars, with simple wooden cut-out shapes at a fraction of the weight. As a compromise, I custom made two guide bars, each from three pieces of 1.5mm aluminium sheet laminated together with glue to produce a replica bar at less than half the weight, and the real chainsaw chains could still be fitted onto them.

In January 2007, I was contacted by the South Korean run of Evil Dead: The Musical, for a two more 'Cabin' saws. These were the first saws to incorporate a modification The Musical had been using for a few months, they replaced my fixed pull-start with 'The Gripper' scuba dive retractor; a unit which could be quickly swapped out as blood would get into the mechanism and make it stick. This was more about functionality than screen accuracy. These saws also had the lightest guide bar I'd managed to make at 334g. The bar shape was cut from 3mm aluminium, and plastic drive chain was laced on with fishing line, then covered in an artex blood finish. Unfortunately, the first two saws arrived utterly trashed as I had been shipping all my saws out in cardboard boxes and they'd had a really rough ride, so I made another two half price and shipped them two weeks later in a proper wooden crate, which arrived safely a week before opening night. Today, I would have sent them free replacements, but I both couldn't afford it and didn't know any better back then.

Scrolling though my emails during this write-up, there are two exchanges which stand out. The first was a July 2006 email & phonecall with the propmaster of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation in California. They were interested in having one of my saws in an episode, but there wasn't enough time for me to make a saw and get it to them by their deadline (of six days away), which was unfortunate as it has long been a favourite show of mine. The second is also noteworthy, but for a different reason. I was contacted in November 2006, by a production called Evil Head; a horror-porno parody of The Evil Dead. They were hoping for a free chainsaw in exchange for a credit. Emails went back and fourth over a few years, but it never happened. Looking it up today, it seems it was made & released in 2012. I have been sent a fair number of "can I have a free chainsaw in exchange for a credit/promotion" emails over the years, and I've always said no, due to my very first sale; to Evil Dead: The Musical's New York run. I sold them two 'Cabin' chainsaws at half price in exchange for a Playbill credit, which never appeared (I still have the playbill I was sent by the production in January 2007). I did enquire about it, but that 'deal' was made with my original contact, not the person I ended up dealing with. Between that and the breaking of the initial chainsaws (which I felt bad about), I thought it just best left alone. Anyway, it was a life lesson which has served me well, plus being known as the chainsaw supplier to The Musical was kudos enough in itself.

In February 2008 I decided to run a test auction for one of my 'Cabin' chainsaws on eBay.com, to gauge interest in a potential separate market of Evil Dead fans who didn't know about my website. The chainsaw was bought by UK fan Sean Gooding, selling for $400, which was just short of £200 once converted. This was over 40% below my standard sale price. I filled the order, but decided to call time on EvilDeadChainsaws.com a few days after that, as I was left feeling it just wasn't worth it.

Even only producing 'Standard' chainsaws, all my spare time was being eaten up, which left me no time to spend on making other new effects gags, and that was the reason it was started. Because I was investing any spare money I made into prototyping new modifications or getting new equipment specifically for producing chainsaws, which meant I wasn't really earning anything out of it either. The pleasure I derived from the creativity in each saw diminished, and it just became more of a soul destroying slog to make one after another. Evil Dead: The Musical were giving me feedback with each new batch of saws, so I could add in revisions and modifications to each new saw, but these accumulated over time and each chainsaw was becoming harder and taking longer to make. Finally I decided to pull the plug and move on. I completed my final two chainsaws on March 2, 2008, and I think they are my best work, one was made for me personally, and the second for Sean. I made a total of Sixteen chainsaws with nine going to Evil Dead: The Musical productions. Tom Sullivan also has one of the first two chainsaws supplied to the 2006 New York run, hanging in his Evil Dead museum, although by now it looks rather sorry for itself after all the abuse its taken over the years.

As it was no longer needed, I made a little pet project out of the huge workshed photo backdrop display, starting just a short time after closing on March 4, 2008. I settled on the idea of moving it into the front room of my house to display my own personal cabin chainsaw, although having thought it through, I came to the conclusion that having an 8ft x 8ft x 4ft deep monolith to Evil Dead sitting next to my sofa might be a little excessive. So I decided to convert the background into a much smaller 3ft x 4ft free-standing display instead, and added some additional new touches, all of which took about 2 days work. I subsequently sold my own saw to a customer in Norway in June 2009. They weren't interested in having the display as it was so large, so it was later dismantled.

Download - EvilDeadChainsaws: Items For Sale (2008)
(3 Page, 2.25mb PDF created 15/06/08 - 210mm x 298mm A4 at 300dpi 85% compression JPEG)

As I no longer could justify paying £40 each month for a workshed I wasn't using, I sold off a lot of the extra tools & machinery which I didn't now need. You can download the for-sale notices I put up at work, above. I kept some items, but all the moulds were trashed. The workshed was cleared and the lease terminated. EvilDeadChainsaws.com was an interesting experience, having made chainsaws for Evil Dead: The Musical, I didn't think when I started up I could have expected to get any higher up the ladder, and I was still sorry to leave it all behind. The experience really put me off physically making things for a while, but I decided to come back to it a few years later...

Modifying A Real Homelite XL (July 2002)

This was the original Homelite XL chainsaw I bought from eBay in July 2002, with some modifications I made at the time. It was dismantled in 2005 and used for moulding & prototyping.

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Prototyping The First 'Workshed' Chainsaw (May to December 2005)

Working from DVD screenshots, the chainsaw above, was dismantled, modified, and body sections moulded to enable me to make Fastcast resin duplicates. Much of the process was guesswork and needed a lot of advice, as I had never made anything as complicated as this previously. While this wasn't a 'working' saw, I made much of it as if it was, so when one was ordered, I assumed I would be able to make one.

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Making The 'Workshed' Photo Backdrop (January to February 2006)

This was initially intended to be the backdrop for the 'Workshed' chainsaw only, with different backdrops for the 'Cabin' & 'Medieval' saws. It was made as a free-standing table with a fake wall attached to the back. A lot of the detail was simply filled in with any items I had freely available, rather than matching what was shown on screen too precisely, although some of the more prominent items were bought, such as the tools hanging on the left.

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Anders Eriksen (February 2006)

This was the Freddy Kruger glove made for me by Anders Eriksen from NightmareGloves.com to be hung in the backdrop, exchanged for my first prototype 'Workshed' chainsaw. Anders worked from Evil Dead II screenshots and matched it as best he could. As it turned out, it was a pretty good match. The screen-shown glove was created from formed sheet-plastic by Tony Elwood, painted a copper colour.

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Prototyping The First 'Cabin' Chainsaw (May to June 2006)

Modifying the 'Workshed' design in to the 'Cabin' chainsaw was a little more difficult, as it involved creating and moulding the lid from scratch, rather than modifying pre-existing parts. I came up with a textured/dirty blood finish to coat it; a technique I was still using on chainsaws in 2015, and something I was asked about more than anything else.

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Making The 'Cabin' Photo Backdrop (July 2006)

This was a semi-half-hearted attempt to come up with a different photo backdrop for the 'Cabin' model chainsaw. It's meant to be the sandy floor of the cabin cellar, with light shining though the floorboards above, and footprints in the sand, although I'm not sure any of that came across too well. These photos were abandoned a few months later and re-taken using the 'Workshed' backdrop instead.

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Sculpting The 'Book Of The Dead' Cover (December 2006 to January 2007)

The abandoned 'Book of the Dead' Evil Dead II style cover sculpt, intended for a prospected revised 'Cabin' backdrop which was never made. It had taken over a month of evenings' work up to that point, but I wasn't completely happy with what I had done so far, and didn't want to put in the weeks-more needed to complete it, so just left it.

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Evil Dead: The Musical - New York Run (September to October 2006)

This was my first proper paid-for order; two 'Standard' 'Cabin' chainsaws for the Evil Dead: The Musical's New York Run. My prototype 'Cabin' saw above, was dismantled, and parts were cannibalized for this order, along with some modifications I wanted to work in over that previous saw. There were immediate strength & durability problems with first two saws I sent, so I made a number of further modifications and sent a third saw, without a blade as they were just using wooden cut-outs.

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Bríann O'Connor, Ireland (October 2006)

The prototype 'Medieval' model saw was made for a waiting customer in Ireland. It's very similar in design to the 'Cabin' saw, just with a different wristband and muffler assembly, and some cosmetic changes. By far the most laborious task was removing the paint from the guide bar. This was back when I used a belt sander & sandpaper rather than paint stripper (which is still not a pleasant task, but still requires far less effort).

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Alistair Barlow, UK (October 2006)

My first paid-for 'Workshed' chainsaw commission, with a ground chain. You can see bottom-right, a photo taken for the website with the body cowl cut away, showing the engine plate which is normally relatively hidden from view.

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Jason Ellis, USA (November 2006)

This was the only 'Deluxe' working chainsaw I made during the whole period. It took around a month of work, and it still didn't work correctly as-designed. The battery pack inside became temperamental as it heated up, so the saw would cut out sometimes. The battery pack had to be custom made to fit in the space. In the end I removed it and ran two wires to a standard battery pack which would be in the wearers pocket. This was far more reliable and made the saw lighter too. That experience made me realize how finicky they were to make, and I didn't relish the idea of making more, so I just removed the 'Deluxe' saw options from the website, and only sold non-working saws from then on.

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James Soutter, UK (February 2007)

My first paid-for 'Cabin' chainsaw commission, with a dried blood finish. When I re-started in 2013, I scaled back the dried blood finish, as looking back, this looks a little overboard!

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My Workshed (March 2007)

The layout of my workshed, as of March 2007. It was all dismantled just a year later, although I continued to expand it, adding benches running down each side, to add working space for tools and machinery.

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Evil Dead: The Musical - Toronto Run (July 2007)

These are two 'Cabin' chainsaws supplied to Evil Dead: The Musical's Toronto run, with modifications based on feedback from the New York run. The mufflers were made solid to make them much stronger, the wristbands were fixed much wider than normal, and each had custom made guide bars, made from three pieces of 1.5mm aluminium sheet laminated together to produce a replica bar at less than half the weight, and the real chainsaw chains could still be fitted onto them. As it turned out, they just used wooden cut-outs too.

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Derek Landy, Ireland (August 2007)

This was the only order I filled in this period which had a display case. I did look at making the perspex box element myself, but it's so tricky to do a neat job, so I bought one custom made from a local plastics supplier, for £80. I did make the wooden base, however.

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Evil Dead: The Musical - South Korea Run (January 2008)

I had to email my contact on the New York run of Evil Dead: The Musical, to check that the request for chainsaws for the South Korean run was genuine! These were the first saws to incorporate a modification The Musical had been using for a few months, they replaced my fixed pull-start with 'The Gripper' scuba dive retractor; a unit which could be quickly swapped out as blood would get into the mechanism and make it stick. This was more about functionality than screen accuracy. These saws also had the lightest guide bar I'd managed to make at 334g. The bar shape was cut from 3mm aluminium, and plastic drive chain was laced on with fishing line, then covered in an artex blood finish. Unfortunately, the first two saws arrived utterly trashed as I had been shipping all my saws out in cardboard boxes and they'd had a really rough ride, so I made another two half price and shipped them two weeks later in a proper wooden crate, which arrived safely a week before opening night. Today, I would have sent them free replacements, but I both couldn't afford it and didn't know any better back then.

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Sean Gooding, UK (March 2008)

This was one of my two final chainsaws; one made for myself, and a second made for the customer who won it on eBay. While the blood was still a little overboard, I still think it was my finest work of the period.

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Closing & Coverting The 'Workshed' Display (March 2008)

Here are photos of the workshed as it existed before I cleared it. As it was no longer needed, I made a little pet project out of the huge workshed photo backdrop display, starting just a short time after closing on March 4, 2008. I converted it in to a much smaller 3ft x 4ft free-standing display, adding some additional new touches, all of which took about 2 days work.

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Brede Johannessen, Norway (June 2009)

The chainsaw you can see hanging in the above display, was subsequently sold to a customer in Norway in June 2009. They weren't interested in having the display as it was so large, so it was later dismantled, and that was the end of the first iteration of EvilDeadChainsaws.com...

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