Stage Flooring

[Garfield]

Hopefully someone will be able to help, we're having a nightmare at our theatre with the stage surface. It is a sprung plywood surface covered in 6mm hardboard, the old surface had been glazed numerous times and in need of replacement. We took advice from people and re surfaced with 6mm oil tempered hardboard, we left expansion gaps between the boards and used Rosco tough prime as the base coat with a water based black paint over the top. It's a much better surface but we are suffering with all kinds of tape (gaffa & pvc) pulling the paint off revealing the boards underneath. Does anyone know of a better way to do it as we are due to do the Studio floor over the summer and could do without the same problem.

 

Cheers

[Brixton]

all kinds of tape (gaffa & pvc) pulling the paint off revealing the boards underneath

Is the offending tape holding the flooring down or simply tape used to mark rostra positions etc.?

If it's holding the floor down why don't you get some 'low tack' double sided tape.

I'm sure if you phoned up someone like Satge 1 and asked Woody or his lads they would be able to tell you where to get it as they use it lots when fixing skin ply onto venue dance floors.

If it's just for marking set piece positions why not use white magic markers instead of tape? Then when the production is over you can simply paint over the marks. I assume you would regularly re-paint the stage floor anyway