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I recently began an ambitious project to recreate the talking skull from Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean attraction. I normally wouldn’t consider tackling something like this, but now I can use my 3D printer to produce parts that I would have had to sculpt by hand (I’m really bad at sculpting).

The idea to recreate the iconic talking skull came from a 3D print that I found on Thingiverse (thanks, twconstantine). The project lacked files for the hat’s skull & crossbones, so I modeled my own using Blender. Then, I modeled the swords from scratch so that they were more accurate and so that I could slice them into smaller, printable pieces. About the only file from the original Thingiverse project that I kept was the skull, but I had to slice that into smaller pieces, too.

Since I wanted to recreate the talking skull from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie makeover, I was going to have to find Jack Sparrow’s beads. I already have a set of Master Replicas’ piece of eight dangle, but that one is in my personal collection; I want another set used exclusively for the talking skull. Most of the ones online sell for $90 and upwards—fortunately, I found a set on eBay for about $40.

As for the long, Kuchi bead strand, there are many online at varying price points . . . and varying designs. Sadly, the majority of them strayed from the design used in both the”Dead Man’s Chest” and “At World’s End” films. The few that were really good ended up being far too expensive. So, I turned to Blender to model my own version.

The beads and the skull & crossbones look awesome after I painted them. Now that I have my items printed, the files were destined to sit on my computer for a long time. I thought about releasing the files online, but the recent allegations of Disney stealing an artist’s tiki drummer 3D print has me hesitant. So, I opened up a personal Etsy shop where I could sell physical 3D prints.

Since I’m a caregiver for a family member, I’m pretty much stuck at home. So, selling on Etsy is a great way to bring in some extra money.

All of my prints are unpainted and unassembled do-it-yourself kits. Printing, cleaning, assembling, and painting would be excessively time consuming and cost prohibitive for me to do personally.

To commemorate the opening of my personal Etsy store, I am also offering a limited-time discount of 15% for the rest of April, 2022. Use promo code PIRATELOOT15 at checkout.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links—as an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying products.