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Prior to this project, I had only been selling chainsaws though EvilDeadChainsaws.com. I had never intended to make a mechanical arm replica. Army Of Darkness is my least favourite of the trilogy and it was never a prop which interested me enough to put the huge amount of work needed, to produce an accurate replica to sell.

This project first began at the start of March 2014. A previous EvilDeadChainsaws.com replica chainsaw customer asked if I had seen the BlindSquirrelProps - Ash Mechanical Hand project, and if I would ever consider taking it on for him. I'd already seen this, and had been thinking about creating a replica Mechanical Arm to sell alongside my chainsaws for some years, but I wasn't overly keen to do much about it.

Even when first starting my replica chainsaws, I at least had an original real Homelite chainsaw body before I started, and just worked from there. The Mechanical Arm would need to be made entirely from scratch with raw materials. As it turned out the only part I could buy off the shelf ready-made was the chainmail glove, and even that needed some modification.

I suggested the customer get in contact with Mike at Blind Squirrel and ask him to make one, although he already had and was told that since Mike didn't mould any of his parts, it would basically mean starting the whole project from scratch again and he didn't want to do that. So anyway over the next few weeks I hawked the project around to some of the local model-making companies to see if anyone else would be willing to do it (I work within Shepperton Film Studios). I was only too happy to completely pass the project onto someone else. Unfortunately I couldn't find anyone who could do it for a reasonable price, so I put it on the back burner until the end of May 2014 when I had more free time. We agreed on a price of £800, and I downloaded & printed off Mike's plans and started working on the rough designs. As I went I found that with regards to the broad measurements & shaping, Mike was spot on, but many of the finer details on his plans were incorrect, misplaced or missing altogether.

So over the next 10 weeks I worked away, from making the parts out of heat-formed plastic sheets to make mouldable forms, which I then made silicone moulds of so I could replicate them in plastic resin. Even then starting out with ready-moulded resin parts, it was still a huge amount of work to make each hand, and not something I relished doing regardless of how much I was charging. Various metal pieces had to be made from scratch , such as the brass & leather arm brace, the vambrace handle, and the finger pistons. Once the first arm was completed, I then made the fixings for a further five arms, so I had them ready made for future orders to cut down on the workload. I sold two more arms in December 2014, one going to a fan in Ireland and the second to the USA. The fourth also went to the USA in September 2015, then the last two arms were made in May 2020 in my newly completed home workshop; one kept for myself (I didn't own one myself before this) and the final sent to a fan in Taiwan.

As the continuity on the screen original varies from shot to shot (especially as it's being constructed), the overall design is somewhat an amalgamation pulling together various details seen over the film, rather than an exact match to one particular version. It goes without saying that the finished version is a non-working prop, in-so-much that it can be worn over someone's arm, but it's not mechanised on it's own. It can only be worn right-handed, and I never made a left-handed version. The overall length with the brass/leather arm frame out straight was 660mm or 26", and the total weight, just 1.5kg or 3.5lb.

One thing I was never happy with for the first four arms, was the metal paint effect. That involved spraying each plastic piece with primer, then silver paint, then aging using water based paints, sprays, and dirt/grime effects. Wherever there was friction between two plastic pieces, the paint would wear over time, especially around the finger plates. I had experimented with cold metal casting, but found it tarnished and became dull quite quickly, quite apart from how much extra work in finishing it would involve. It wasn't until the final two arms, that I worked out something far more hard-wearing and realistic. I felt able to leave the last two arms looking much 'cleaner', than the previous four, as they now looked more like proper metal. You can read a write-up of that newer process Here. You can also read up the chemical ageing process I used for all the real metal parts Here.

As of writing in 2021, I still have the moulds in storage, but it would be a major undertaking to make any more arms. The five sets of fixings I made back in 2014 have been used up, which would mean a lot more work next time round. The crank handle alone, is made up of 25 metal parts; measured, cut, heated/bent, drilled, soldered/glued & bolted together, then aged.

Prototyping The First Mechanical Arm (June to August 2014)

Below you can see a gallery of in-progress project photos, which you can click to enlarge. They are presented in chronological order and were taken at various intervals over the eight week make.

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Craig Warner, UK (August 2014)

The first completed mechanical arm, bought by Craig from the UK. It took eight weeks to make from scratch, but I was pretty happy with the final result, plus I now had moulds to replicate all the plastic parts to make more arms. Craig also ordered a display case for his arm, ten months later in June 2015.

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Bríann O'Connor, Ireland (December 2014)

This second arm went to Ireland. Bríann also bought a Cabin model chainsaw the year before, in 2013. That chainsaw was a replacement for a previous 'Medieval' chainsaw bought in November 2006 bought as a Christmas present for his brother, which was later damaged.

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Dennis Carter Jnr, USA (December 2014)

This was made for Dennis Carter Jnr in the USA. Dennis has a huge Evil Dead collection with some really rare pieces, so it's nice to have my replica now as part of that.

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Tony Cortez, USA (September 2015)

This was the final mechanical arm I made before closing EvilDeadChainsaws.com in 2015, for a customer in the USA. I put the moulds and all the other assorted related items into storage after this.

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The Final Two Mechanical Arms (April to May 2020)

In February 2020, I moved house and in March was able to outfit my own home workshop for the first time since 2009. I had one customer who had been asking about getting a mechanical arm for a few years. I finally decided to take the last two sets of fixtures and fittings and make two last mechanical arms. While that customer wasn't in a financial position to buy it at that time, I offered it online and it was snapped up by a customer in Taiwan. Here you can see a gallery of in-progress photos. They are presented in chronological order and were taken at various intervals over the four week make.

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Min Chung, Taiwan (May 2020)

The final mechanical arm, created for a customer in Taiwan. You can see the difference in the paint finish on the below arm, to the examples above. It's far more hard-wearing and wont wear as the pieces rub together, plus it looks more like real metal.

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If anyone out there wants to make their own mechanical arm replica, you should be able to source all the materials I used from either eBay or local stores, and you can download the high resolution Army Of Darkness Blu-Ray screenshots, original prop photos, and the PDF plans I worked from, within the ZIP file below.

Download - features_evildeadchainsaws_mechanical_arm_reference.zip
(64 screenshots / 22 photos JPEGS / PDF plans & website mirror, 103mb at 85% compression JPEG)

If anyone has photos of their own mechanical arm replicas, or any Evil Dead related replica items, please email them over so they can be added to this site's Collectables - Props & Replicas Section.