Putting Your Casting Skills to Work

About 45 river rocks were cast to complete the well.

Now that we’ve gone over several ways to cast, it’s time I posted the directions to my replica of the well from the movie The Ring.

Some people have built this well purely for a year-round decorative yard piece. Others just pull the prop out for their haunts.

Other Well Tutorials

Another intriguing tutorial on aged well design can be found at Haunter’s Hangout. The main material for that project is Styrofoam.

After watching a woman from Buildeasy make a wooden well from scratch, it made me think a piece of store-bought wooden rollable fencing would also work for the circular frame in my directions. It would just need to be cut down to the desired height.

Directions for Pictured Well

 You’ll Need:

• 4 or more molds of rocks(see Casting: Part 2)
• A small can of both black and grey latex paints
• Plaster of Paris, water and mixing bucket
• A few paint stir sticks
• A frame for the well (such as a cut-off piece from a cardboard garbage drum, an old drum set, etc;)
• A heavy duty large hot glue gun/sticks
• Dried moss

Line your rock molds on a flat surface and mix your plaster with the water per package directions. Pour some grey paint into the plaster and mix well. Add some black paint, but mix only until it looks marbleized. Pour plaster into the molds. Let set, pop them out of the molds and repeat until you have enough to cover your circular frame.

Once the rocks are completely dry, squeeze some hot glue on the back of a rock and place it randomly on your circular frame and repeat. Don’t be concerned about the rocks not fitting flush with each other. That’s what the moss is for later.

After the glued rocks cover most of the well frame, mix a bucket of plaster to a thicker consistency than directions on package suggest. It needs to be the thickness of oatmeal or like very soft putty. Add grey paint to the mix. Move quickly with next step because plaster hardens quickly!

Take a glob of the plaster and rub it over the top lip and toward the stones to hide any edges. Don’t worry about any plaster drips. They will actually make the well look more aged and authentic. Press moss randomly into the wet plaster. Do the same to any gaps between rocks.