Tag Archives: wood

Out Like a Lion… with Links!

March 30, 2012 Eric Hart

USITT is in full swing on the other coast, and I am only a few days away from the next deadline on my book. Things are hopping around here! Here are some interesting things from around the web:

Since I couldn’t make it to USITT, I’ve tried using Storify for the first time to cull together some news and tidbits about it. Tell me what you think.

Local man hopes for a leg up to career in the movies! This is the story of a 47 year old man from Northern Ireland who was laid off from his job and decided to switch gears and learn how to make props for movies. Even if you don’t want to read the story, the picture at the top of the page is definitely worth a glance.

Do you like giant woodshops? Do you like Ron Swanson? Nick Offerman, who plays Ron on TV’s Parks and Rec, has an enviable woodshop, which he shows off in this video. Nick learned carpentry by working as a theatrical set carpenter, so he has his shop set up like a scenery shop. The things he builds, though, are a far cry from flats and platforms.

In this interesting article called “The Tool Works at Both Ends“, we learn how your brain adapts and remodels itself depending on what tasks we do throughout the day. If you sit in front of a computer all day, your brain becomes better at absorbing large amounts of text and processing it while multitasking on other thoughts. If you work in a carpentry shop all day, your brain becomes more adept at guiding your hands to use tools and imagining how pieces of wood would look assembled in your head. The article proposes a “mental crossfit” program to condition all the portions of your brain throughout the day. As props people, we probably have one of the best jobs as far as maintaining a good brain balance goes, in that we are constantly switching between tasks such as research, collaborating with team members, hands-on building and crafting, and abstract problem-solving.

How-to

La Boheme Crepe Cart

March 26, 2012 Eric Hart

Today I thought I would go retro and show you a cart I built back in 2007. La BohemeÂ at the Santa Fe Opera required a whole bunch of push carts during the outdoor scenes, so the other prop carpenter and I set to work constructing them.

The first one I built was a crepe cart. The structure was simple enough, but the wheels were all custom-sized, so the first thing I had to do was fabricate the wheels and the axle system.

I built the wheels out of metal because the diameter of the spokes and the rim in the drawing was small enough that I was afraid wood might not be strong enough. I TIG welded the rods to the hub to keep the welds as visually-unobtrusive as possible. The rim of the wheel was a length of bar stock bent into a circle and welded together. It also had a strip of rubber glued along the outside to cut down on noise and keep it from tearing up the stage floor.

The front wheel stuck way out to the front of the cart. I first assembled a jig to hold it in position. I then cut the four bars that held it in place and welded them to the axle while the wheel was in position. This ensured that the wheel was centered, at the correct height, and completelyÂ parallelÂ with the direction the cart traveled. I thought I was very clever until it came time to remove the jig and I realized I had built the cart around it; I had to cut the jig apart to get it off.

Above is a picture showing the bottom of the cart with the front wheel in place and the axles for the back wheels. If you look close, you can see the back axle is actually separated in the middle; when the cart is turned, the wheel on the inside of the turn spins more slowly than the one on the outside, so they need to be able to spin independently of each other.

I added a circle of wood and a decorative rosette we had in stock to cap off the hub.

The top of the cart was pretty straightforward; it consisted of a plywood box, a thick “counter”, two handles I shaped out of solid alder, and a metal box to serve as the oven. There was also a braking system to lock the wheels in place to keep the cart from rolling into the audience when the artist walked away, but that is a post for another day (In opera, the singers are called “artists”, rather than “actors” or “singers”).

A number ofÂ accoutermentsÂ completed the look. A box with a hinged lid was placed on front for artists to take crepes from. I welded a tube in position to hold an umbrella at a jaunty angle; the umbrella needed to be removable to facillitate storage backstage. Finally, I placed some molding around the edges to match what was in the drawing.

Here is the final cart after the paint shop finished with it and the props master dressed it.Â Bon appÃ©tit!

Education, Reprints

The Construction of a Table

March 7, 2012 Eric Hart

FromÂ Furniture Designing and DraughtingÂ (1907), by Alvan Crocker Nye, we have this wonderful diagram on how to make a table.

The top row shows names of the common parts of a table.

The next two images show a number of ways of attaching the legs. The one on the left shows the frame both being doweled to the leg and using a mortise and tenon. The frame itself is connected with blocks which tongue into a groove in the frame. The drawing on the right shows a cleat screwed to the top, with a leg tenoned into the cleat.

Continuing down the drawing is a “section of a built-up top”. As a solid wood top is expensive and hard to come by, tops were often built up with a core and covered with a finish veneer to make it look like a piece of solid wood. A piece of cross veneer was placed between the core and finish veneer; this is a piece of veneer in which the grain runs perpendicularly to the core and finish veneer.

The bottom row shows various means of securing the top to the frame. The left shows a screw which is countersunk nearly halfway through the height of the frame. The middle illustrates a pocket hole screw. The drawing on the right shows the blocks which were previously illustrated up above.

Useful Sites

Friday Links

March 2, 2012 Eric Hart

Happy March 3rd everybody! Wait, it’s March 2nd? Did an extra day sneak in there somewhere? Anyway, I hope you enjoy the following websites as much as I did.

This brief article is about Adrienne Call, the only (undergrad) theatre tech major in props at SUNY New Paltz.

Here is a collection of the 50 most powerful images from the Civil War. There are a lot of illustrations and some photographs too.

The Wood Database, as would be expected, contains pictures of over 300 species of wood and ways to identify them. Many of the woods have multiple photographs showing their grain patterns as well as items constructed from them, and information on working with them and safety considerations (some wood is poisonous or toxic).

Basketry: this lengthy article talks about the history of basket-weaving and basketry, the materials used, the different methods of manufacture, and where basket-weaving techniques are used. There are a lot of pictures, but (unfortunately) no step-by-step instructions on making your own baskets. Still, it’s very informative for anyone having to deal with baskets and wicker work.

“There are No Accidents” is a series of public service videos by Prevent-It, aÂ CanadianÂ occupational safety organization. Most of the videos show a worker getting in a horrible (and often gory) accident, than recovering and explaining how workplace “accidents” are often the combination of employers pushing the limits, supervisors not maintaining machines and following policies, and workers doing something they know is dangerous.

Finally, not to get political, but the title alone of this next article is so apt for prop people: You Actually Can Put A Gun Rack In A Chevy Volt, Newt Gingrich.

Features

A Visit to the Woodwright’s School

February 27, 2012 Eric Hart

Last Saturday, I went with The Alamance Makers Guild to the Woodwright’s School in Pittsboro, NC. The Makers Guild is a group I discovered down here which is interested in many of the same things I am; woodworking, sculpting, fabrication, blacksmithing, science and art. Some of the members have begun designing a human-powered lathe, so the trip to the Woodwright’s School was kind of a research trip to see some of the antique human-powered tools which they have refurbished.

For those who don’t know, the School is run by Roy Underhill, host of the Woodwright’s Shop on PBS, which has been on the air since 1981. He showed us some of the original catalogs of these various treadle and pedal powered machines.

Roy Underhill using a foot-powered spindle cutter

In the photo above, Roy is using a foot-pedal-powered spindle cutter. We might recognize the modern-dayÂ equivalentÂ of a router table or shaper; the tool has a rotating blade which cuts a shaped profile along the edge of a board of wood. The blade in the machine was a bit dull, so the end of the cut got a little wonky.

My wife tried out the foot-pedal-powered lathe. She just bought her own lathe at school a few days prior to this. The foot-powered one was tricky for both of us because you have to sit down to pedal. We are used to standing up and using our hips to brace the tools and our whole body to move it along the cut. This one requires you to do all the bracing and moving with just your hands, which feels awkward at first. Nonetheless, it makes some nice cuts, and it is a lot quieter than any electrically-powered machine.

We also watched Roy demonstrate this foot-powered mortising machine. It essentially has a sharp chisel connected to a lever which you push down with your foot; several linkages give it quite a bit of mechanical advantage so the chisel just plows right through the wood like butter.

Roy set up a boring machine outside that we all tried out. Though it was a large auger and a fairly thick plank of wood, boring through it was no problem. All of these hand and human-powered tools reminded me that if your bits and blades are sharp, it does not actually take that much effort to cut and bore. You get a good workout as well.

Above the school is the antique tool shop where all the tools which they find and refurbish are offered for sale. Planes, saws, calipers, folding rules, router planes, augers, mallets and many more varieties of tools known and unknown were on display.

Prop Agenda