alanbain

Yes, they were phone pictures and not the best; can try and take some better ones with an actual camera! Alan

Anyone able to help me identify these floods? Suspect ancient strand of 40s era? Around 150w (when they work...). They are on lower able battens - but access is difficult! http://www.the-sot.org/Nft/IMG_1930.JPG http://www.the-sot.org/Nft/IMG_1931.JPG http://www.the-sot.org/Nft/IMG_1932.JPG

I'm looking to source a piece of white/off-white (basically not black) sharks tooth gauze with a 3.5m drop and width somewhere between 5m and 7m. It's for a three night run of very low budget opera so very happy with a piece that shows some signs of use for example wear from hire (or indeed a part could be cut down from a larger gauze with some damage); the normal hire gauzes I have used in the past tend to be for more normal prosc theatre drops like 6m. Any suggestions on places to look / hire companies who might be friendly would be most welcome...

Nice idea -I'd forgotten that stuff; used it once before to make a throne and it worked really well. Three layers locked up solid.

It's OK, I know how to build boats (and have done so) but a certain amount of experience tells me that construction for the stage often doesn't just mirror construction in real life (I certainly remember the huge roars of laughter when I made a dovetailed drawer for use in a set) and sometimes giving people the impression that they are seeing what they expect to see is more important than showing them what the object would actually look like. Usually the frames are either steam bent (for small boats) or made from series of sawn sections joined with plated scarf joints in order to keep the grain as straight as possible. But in general one doesn't pick boats up very often (at least not without a crane)!

'm looking to build a lightweight structure resembling the wreck of a boat for stage use as shown in the front and side sketches below. I'm looking at materials to use for the frames (the cross hatched pieces). Obviously in real life they would be solid wood. I'd like to keep weight down (it gets moved around) compared to say using thick plywood and wondered if there were a suitable composite material (for example 6mm ply sandwiched with a foam core and then another layer of 6mm ply) which might appear to have the thickness of solid timber without the weight. Any suggestions welcome? http://www.the-sot.org/iodg/boat_small.png

Asbestos ? Suspect so - I keep well away, the wooden access ladder also encourages this course of action! This sounds ideal (as does the price...) thanks for this suggestion.

I'm working in a rather basic venue which lacks any sensible flying facilities. I have a plan to hang a cyclorama cloth (7m wide by 3.6m high) from an astralite truss at the rear of the stage (there are two painted cloths on drop rollers but both are unsuitable and changing them isn't an option). The lighting rig is similarly primitive. Above the stage are 1930s strand flood units with cloth insulation... which give off minimal light and the other hanging positions are a difficult to access advance bar with some LED fixtures and Ovation E910s with zoom lenses on the balcony. I was wondering if there existed lightweight LED battens in the usual hire company stock which could be used to light the cyc hung on the front of the truss (with the cyc hanging on the back). The normal 4-cell incandescent units are a bit too heavy. This doesn't make it possible to get them far away and they would need to be quite wide angled. Any suggestions welcome.... Alan

Well that made me laugh.....

Most of my Quartet 22/40 have nice simple screw knobs for the focus/zoom. One has plastic quick release toggles which you snap up and down to unlock the lens elements. Naturally one of them has broken. My hunt for a replacement is failing; not helped by the fact that every diagram I see shows the screw knobs. Is there something I don't know about these lanterns? Alan