#OctopiWallStreet: Big Cheap Tentacles

Intro: #OctopiWallStreet: Big Cheap Tentacles

I set out to make some tentacles for our front yard, and I needed them to be fast and cheap. Behold, pool noodles, duct tape and spray paint!

STEP 1: Gather Your Supplies

For each tentacle:

• 2 – jumbo pool noodles (I used the Big Boss brand – about 3.5” diameter with a hole in the middle. The hole is not vital, but it does make staking easier)
• 1 – regular pool noodle (about 2.5” diameter, hole recommended)
• 1 –6’ foam pipe insulation. I used some I had on hand, I think it’s 3/8” wall. This is for the suckers. If you can, get the kind that isn’t fully slit, it makes gluing go faster. Note: you can also use another regular pool noodle for this, but I liked the hole-to-foam ratio of the insulation better. How much you’ll use depends on the density of your sucker placement, I used 2.5 6’ lengths for 3 tentacles.
• 1 roll duct tape per tentacle (cheap is fine – look for at least 40yds)
• something to fill in empty areas – I used plastic grocery bags, you could also use foam or fiberfill or rags or ugly Christmas sweaters.
• Wire coat hanger.
• Glue gun and sticks
• Spray primer and as many colors of spray paint as you have on hand

STEP 2: Tape Your Noodles Together

Gather your noodles, coat hanger, and duct tape.

Get the smaller noodle. Now, bend your coat hanger so it’s long and narrow enough to cram into the hole in the smaller noodle. Cram. Leave the hook end protruding a bit. This will make the tip area moderately pose-able.

Set up the three noodles as shown in highly technical drawing.

The smaller noodle is extending 18-24” above the tops of the two large noodles (eyeball it). That’s going to be the top of your tentacle.

You may want to cut a few inches of the bottom end of the smaller noodle, to use as shims for the curving procedure in the next step.

Tape the noodles together in a few places, just to hold them together while you’re working.

You can carve the top of the jumbo noodles to make them taper up toward the tip of the tentacle, or not. I did it both ways and I don’t think the effort was worth it, but your standards may be higher. If you are going to carve, you may want the extension of the smaller noodle to be a bit shorter, so you’re not losing as much bulk on your finished tentacle.

STEP 3: Duct Tape

There’s a hook coming out of the top of your noodle. Start wrapping plastic bags or foam or whatever you’re using as filler around the top of the hook, to make a nice shape. Then start wrapping the duct tape over it. Add more filler as you go toward the junction of the three noodles.

Use lots of duct tape. If you want to pose the tip of the tentacle in a particular way (say, to hold a sign) do it now so that you don’t break the duct tape or lose paint trying to do it later.

Continue wrapping and stuffing until you reach the top of the jumbo noodles, and from there on down just wrap. Go all the way to the end, but leave the ends uncovered. You can only paint the parts that have duct tape on them, so be sure everything is well-covered.

If you want to try to shape your tentacles, you can add curves after the tentacle is wrapped. To do that, use a pair of scissors or a knife to cut through the duct tape and about halfway through one of the jumbo noodles. Now bend the tentacle away from the cut, and then jam a piece of pool noodle (from step 2, remember?) into the opening. Apply duct tape liberally over the wound, filling in with plastic bags or other stuffing to smooth the area if needed. The illustration on this page attempts to show that, but mostly it looks like an outtake from the worst sex ed curriculum ever.

Now you have a tentacle! It’s lovely! Make more!

STEP 4: Suckers!

Cut the foam pipe insulation into small lengths;scissors will handle this just fine. Don’t obsess about it; the ends don’t need to be straight and it’s probably more interesting if they’re not. Mine varied from about 3/8” to 1" high.

If you are using the kind of insulation that is already slit and has adhesive strips, peel and stick the edges together before you start cutting.

If you google information about actual octopi, you will see that there are rules for where their suckers go. I did not do that, so I just made a giant inaccurate barnacle-y load of suckers. Your call.

Anyway, once you’ve either cut all your insulation or gotten bored with it and decided to move on to gluing for a while, you’re going to fire up your glue gun and start gluing suckers on your tentacles.
Glue Steps:
1. Put a bead of glue around one cut end of the insulation, stick it to the tentacle.
2. Repeat.

This will go on for a while. Your glue gun trigger finger will become tired. You will probably burn yourself if you’re not using low-melt glue. Again, do not obsess – glue drips or blobs will blend in once everything is painted. It’s a tentacle. It’s from the deep, dark ocean and it’s so freaky down there, sometimes you get a little hot glue around your suckers. No one says anything.

STEP 5: Painting

Throw down a tarp, because this is going to get colorful.

I used spray primer (Rustoleum brand, if it matters) as a first coat, because I was concerned about the paint adhering to the duct tape. I think it helped.

Spray primer on everything. Try to hit the inside of the suckers as much as you can.

Once you get a coat of primer on, you'll see that the lines from the duct tape edges really stand out, and you'll feel a twinge of despair. It's ok, that's what the crazy paint job is for.

The Crazy Paint Job

The key is to avoid large areas of solid color, because then your eye is drawn to the fact that this thing is made out of duct tape. So, get out all your spray paint, no matter what color it is. First, lay down your base colors (mine were red, orange, and yellow), and then use every other color to add shading and highlights. To put it another way – spray a whole bunch of paint on there, some of it lightly, some of it heavily, overlap it and mist different colors and paint over anything you don't like. My tentacles have teal, metallic gold, neon green, spring green, dark blue, and black paint over the base red/orange/yellow.

STEP 6: Arrange Your Tentacles

Remember when I said that it's good to have the pool noodles that have a hole in the middle? That's because all you have to do now is slide a stick into the bottom of your tentacle using that hole, and your tentacle is ready to go anywhere. Obviously, your plans for your tentacles will determine how secure they need to be. I used 3/4" PVC pipe lengths for my tentacle bases. They're supported by stakes in the ground - the pipe slips right over the stakes. The tentacle with the sign is also zip-tied to an upside-down tomato cage because I was having trouble balancing it. Tentacles!

Comments

[cjameson]

These are great. Does anyone have thoughts on how to make them to move around a bit? maybe with some small servos and a Arduino?

[LuciferL]

Fantastic..and this was a funny read too!!

[justwhisper]

I think you did a really great job on these tentacles. I am using your concept to make some for my pirate ship scene. The tutorial was very nicely done. Thank you for sharing this. And I don't care what all those small minded people say, your sign is funny too.

[Gizah]

You mean octopuses.

[timmycutts]

No. The plural of octopus is octopi. Just like the plural of cactus is cacti and the plural of fungus is fungi. Don't take it personally, but I really tend to loath people who don't know that. When you have a word ending in "us" you make it plural with by replacing "us" with "i" just like you make a word ending in "um" by replacing "um" with "a" (i.e. bacterium becomes bacteria). It's really the only time you don't put an "s" at the end of the word when there's a vowel before a consonant, also, you don't put "es" on the end if it's vowel before consonant (like in monkeys).

[bderby]

What an ignoramus. You may have to look that up. :)

[timmycutts]

I know what an ignoramus is. And you may just be one for assuming that I don't.

[bderby]

No, I was merely reminding you of a word ending in 'us' that is pluralized by adding an 'es'. That's all. :)

[Gizah]

"Don't take it personally, but I really tend to loath people who don't know that".

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see~
Ah, I love The Beatles.
The correct plural forms of cactus and fungus are cactuses and funguses (just kidding, cacti and fungi are alright too).

"When you have a word ending in "us" you make it plural with by replacing "us" with "i""

Just because you assume something it doesn't make it a fact, or a grammatical rule, for that matter. See, this rule always works: When you have a word, and you don't know its plural form, you look it up.

Anyways, you're wrong. Octopi is an hypercorrection, based on the assumption that the word "Octopus" comes from Latin, while it's actually native to Greek. Octopuses is the right form. But... you know how hypercorrections are, and that's how "Octopi" ended up making its way into so many dictionaries, so I guess you wouldn't be wrong if you used that word.

Anyways, peace, I was just being an idiot when I said "You mean octopuses", I don't really care that much about grammar.

PS: I just noticed wikipedia treats this subject in the "Octopus" article, it says that, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, even if the word came from latin, "Octopi" still would be wrong.

[timmycutts]

I appreciate the self put-down, however I have learned that no one, in their right mind, should really care what others think (which kind of leaves me and maybe a couple thousand other people out of the six billion people in the world who are actually in their right mind). I feel that a word's origin is irrelevant, unless it is a word like "sushi" or "karaoke" which are still used in their original languages. English is such a varied language that there are bound to be differences in people's opinions. I, personally, can't stand how awkward it is to say "octopuses", while I accept that it's right, I just don't like saying it, and I tend to get protective over my way of doing things. I prefer the Latin "hypercorrection", as you put it, so I'm going to stick with that. I believe that, in order for everyone to reach an agreement on this, we should make the assumption that, since it's English and it's already way more complicated than it should be, and that "octopuses", "octopi" and "octopodes" are all correct.

It's fascinating how people on this site jump on other people (particularly me) at every chance they get and no one does anything about it. It's like watching vultures flock around a corpse and pick it apart for no other reason beyond the fact that that's just what they do.

[Streak-]

I certainly admire your ability to follow the rules of English (or Latin, as the case may be), however, on that note, I should point out that the first two uses of 'like' you have should be 'as': 'as' is a conjunction, 'like' is a preposition. As well, your 'i.e.' should be an 'e.g.', as it provides an example, not clarifies/rewords a statement.

[timmycutts]

My apologies. As much as I obsess over grammar, it is very easy for me to to make mistakes that I am not aware of, thank you for the correction.

[Rodster]

Actually if you look it up both Octopuses and Octopi are correct. Octopi was created in the 17th century when noblemen tried to make English sound more classical. Originally it was Octopuses.

[Kokor]

Its not Greek, its New Latin. Coined in 1758, from the Greek. Octopi is correct, octopuses is incorrect. Monkies is correct, monki is incorrect.

And where was this 'ible before Halloween? I could have used some cool looking, cheap tentacle ideas a few weeks ago. Lets hope Cthulhu just eats Wall Street and has done with it all.

[Gizah]

What you mean is the word came from Greek to English -via- New Latin. But we're English speakers (well, I actually only speak English when on the internet, but you get it), not Latin speakers, so it'd be logical to pluralize the word according to our own rules, or the rules of the language said word comes from (which is Greek, not New Latin).
The point is, the plural form "octopuses" was the only one until some... zoologist probably, decided to latinize it and say "octopi" instead, probably thinking it would make him look sharper at Latin parties.
Therefore "octopi" is an hypercorrection.
Therefore it is wrong.
Just like many other hypercorrections, "octopi" has been used for quite some time, so I don't think it's wrong if you use it, since it made such a deep way into English. But you're definitely wrong if you think "octopi" is in any way more correct than "octopuses" is.

Monkies is incorrect, though I'm not 100% sure about this.

[xenobiologista]

Indeed....it's "monkeys", as timmycutts already pointed out.

[Rodster]

From the Merriam-Webster editor:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/28/is-it-octopuses-or-octopi_n_662167.html

[Kokor]

I think this is an issue of "political/grammar correctness" taken too far (just like this thread). So many people just say octopuses that it has been accepted, because 'everyone is right in their own way' sort of thinking.

It was coined as octopi by the people who wanted to look sharper at Latin parties because they where the people who came up with the nominclature to begin with back a few centuries ago. I'd like to respect their wishes, personallly. Since English is such an agglomeration of loan words, fully accepted with their own silly little grammar rules, octopus is still English.

And since I couldn't find a link to the very relevant Gary Larson cartoon, please enjoy this link
http://www.sc.edu/carolinian/features/fea_01dec_01.html

Oh, and really? Don't make fun? I fully support the Movement but once we loose our sense of humor, and start taking ourselves too seriously, we endanger the very ideals of community they espouse. The Committee of Public Saftey is not all that far behind.

And still a great Instructable! Thanks Sara - will be using these next Halloween :)

[Mugatu]

Sorry, the plural of 'octopus' is 'octopuses' or 'octopodes'

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=octopuses&searchmode=none

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyY2mK8pxk

[Redison]

It's octopuses, it's Greek not Latin. I believe this is the definition of irony.