Stage leg storage

[Stuart91]

As we ease out of lockdown I'm going to have a bit of a chance to tackle some of life's annoyances. One thing that's in my sights is how we move staging legs to gigs.

 

Short legs (up to 500mm) aren't a problem because we have wooden boxes / trays that hold them upright. Once we get any longer than that, a box that holds a small enough number to be easily liftable doesn't have a large enough footprint to keep from falling over in a van.

 

I've got a couple of wheeled flight cases that hold some of our longer legs (600mm and 1m) but they only fit lying horizontally, which means it's hard to tell how many you have. Invariably we have to empty it and do a full count to be confident of the numbers going to a job.

 

There are some older flight cases kicking around that could probably be modified to fit a decent amount of legs, standing vertically. The tricky bit is holding the legs in place, especially when there's less than a full load. I'd wondered about fitting a wooden panel inside with a hole drilled for each leg to poke through, but that's going to waste a lot of space. Making it in metal instead would mean less of a margin required between legs but I don't really have the tooling available to fabricate that myself.

 

I was wondering if anyone has come up with a better design themselves, or if there are any off-the-shelf solutions that I could look at?

[GridGirl]

Divide the box into sections, rather than individual holes for each leg? Four or six or nine sections, depending on the size of the flight case. Legs should stand up relatively upright even if there are only a few in each section. Or can you find reinforcing mesh which has about the right size holes to take a leg, and put two pieces of that into the box, near the bottom and near the top?

[ontoprigger]

You could use weldmesh, this is widely available and cost effective, and wold not be too expensive to try out.

https://www.sure-green.com/steel-welded-wire-panels.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjw0Mb3BRCaARIsAPSNGpUFBd2kASDr2c6nFgMfQeUvgqx3p9emB9dSRvaU_vdBd0XoL7Fzr54aAgRBEALw_wcB#194=195&243=194&158=198

[kerry davies]

Similarly to Gridgirl's sectioning of the cases, use a router to carve a series of slots in opposing sides of the flightcase and use a sheet of ply as a movable partition. You could rout them out to allow one layer at a time making stocktaking easier.

 

For limited numbers of aluminium legs Alistage supplied us with canvas bags and the correct numbers were kept in each bag of differing lengths.

[the kid]

We store legs on the shelf and throw in cases as needed. Usually its 1m and under. the 1.2m we send a few of and have some slim 40x40x120 cases that they fit in "just". They are flipable but not easily liftable.

 

We dont have the format im thinking of but cargocart in germany have some frame works with boxes that are pretty good for legs/deck stuff as needed. If anything our biggest issue is the deck- Just too much of it.

[jacethebase]

We just have flightcases full of each sized leg. Then cases full of each accessory.

You either pick how many you want from each in to a smaller case or put the whole case on the van / truck for larger shows.

 

A really easy way of keeping count. Put 50 legs in a box and weight it.

[Stuart91]

Thanks, everyone - this is all very useful.

 

 

You could use weldmesh, this is widely available and cost effective, and wold not be too expensive to try out.

 

Weldmesh looks like a great option for sectioning off cases - hadn't occurred to me at all. I'll definitely order up a sheet or two to experiment with. Our local steel stockholders have it at a pretty decent price.

 

use a router to carve a series of slots in opposing sides of the flightcase and use a sheet of ply as a movable partition. You could rout them out to allow one layer at a time making stocktaking easier.

For limited numbers of aluminium legs Alistage supplied us with canvas bags

 

I fear my routing skills would not be up to the partitioning. Canvas bags could be good for smaller numbers - less cumbersome than boxes and easier to throw into a pack. One of my pet hates is when people tape legs into pairs or fours and leave them to roll around in the back of a van.

 

At the moment we store shorter legs (up to 500mm) on the shelf and fill boxes as required. We don't quite have the space to be able to do this with the longer legs, so having flight cases that we can easily count would be a winner. At the moment the options are to either count out a handful, with no easy way to move them, or take the entire case.

 

You either pick how many you want from each in to a smaller case or put the whole case on the van / truck for larger shows.

 

We're never quite confident of the total number without emptying the case and doing a full count. And I've had the occasional problem where someone has taken an entire case (with all the legs) to one job, leaving us with none for any others that come in. Being able to count out what they need easily should solve that.

[jacethebase]

Sounds like you need to buy more legs bud

[Stuart91]

Sounds like you need to buy more legs bud

 

Maybe...

 

Although at the moment we have enough legs to all of our decks at every height. What happens is there's a job requiring a lot of legs, say 80% of the stock. Someone takes the flightcase for the sake of convenience, so that's 100% of that length out of the building. Then if a different job needs a handful, we're scrabbling to cover it. I've had a few near misses where using jacks to get to the desired height saved the day. It doesn't help that customers often don't know what length of leg they need until they see them in the flesh.

 

Hopefully better cases, with the legs sitting vertical and easily counted, will make it easier to ensure people only take what's needed.

 

I usually don't have an issue with building/buying my way out of a problem, but we're already struggling for storage space so duplicating the stock doesn't seem very attractive at the moment.

 

For limited numbers of aluminium legs Alistage supplied us with canvas bags and the correct numbers were kept in each bag of differing lengths.

 

That suggestion got me thinking, and it looks like a fairly easy option to get something like these. Could potentially even have different colour bags for each length.

Edited June 24, 2020 by Stuart91

[pscandrett]

One company I work for has stacking 'trays' and matching wheelboards; the trays take 12-16-24 legs (appropriately sized trays per leg size) and for a job you take as many trays as you need, stack them up, wheel them off and away you go. It seems like a pragmatic solution and means you don't double handle them (you can count by seeing there's a full box) and you don't send out more than is on the prep sheet. It also has the benefit of allowing you to easily check to see if you've got all the legs while on site, so you don't leave any behind.

 

Another company I do stuff for seems to go for the 'chuck them in a flightcase' approach which I'm less keen on - it just isn't as user-friendly. I don't favour bags for legs (or indeed tripods/stands, but that's a personal preference) because it means you have to lift them everywhere!

[Stuart91]

One company I work for has stacking 'trays' and matching wheelboards; the trays take 12-16-24 legs (appropriately sized trays per leg size) and for a job you take as many trays as you need, stack them up, wheel them off and away you go.

 

Our shorter legs (6, 9, 12, 18 inches) are all in wooden boxes/trays, sized so that they can stand upright. We've got 24 legs per box, so it's rare that we'd need enough at a gig to justify a trolley solution. I like the idea, though.

 

I suppose the flightcase I'm planning is just a scaled-up version of that for the longer legs.

 

(By the way, I have some ex-Message Trust wooden trays kicking around. The 26" steel legs that were in them were beastly to move around, so they've been repurposed as pegs for cables to hang from)

 

I don't favour bags for legs (or indeed tripods/stands, but that's a personal preference) because it means you have to lift them everywhere!

 

I agree in general - I'm thinking of bags for limited numbers - maybe four or eight legs tops - to avoid them being thrown in loose.

[Stuart91]

Update on the weldmesh approach: unfortunately the mesh that has a 50mm spacing won't fit 48mm pipe in the holes. It's not a 50mm gap, it's a 50mm interval that includes the couple of mm of the wire itself. It's frustrating close but won't work.

 

I've seen a couple of online sellers offering mesh with 2" holes (50.8mm) so I'll investigate that next.