Tag Archives: woodworking

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A Gift of Prop Links

8 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets of the Pretty Little Liars’ Vengeful Board Game – We head to Cosmo this morning to learn about the elaborate board game created by props master Chris Vail. Unlike “Cones of Dunshire,” this game is actually played on screen over several episodes. The details are gorgeous and Vail explains how they built the various mechanisms we see in the show.

Paul Huston on Making Models and History for Star Wars: A New Hope - Star Wars turns 40 this year, so StarWars.com talks with Paul Huston, who has worked on all eight Star Wars films so far. It is amazing to look back and realize just how much movie-making technology was invented solely to create that film.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival Scene Shop Skips the Fasteners – OSF needs to rep ten shows at the height of their season, so they are always looking for ways to make change-over go quicker. For the set of Shakespeare in Love, they have come up with a way to sleeve pieces together without requiring fasteners. Check out the video to see how they make custom 3D-printed hardware to pull this off.

Beowulf Boritt, Set Designer, Renovates His Home – It’s always great to see a theater person’s home, especially when they do a lot of the renovation themselves. Check out all the custom parts that have gone into Beowulf’s Sutton Place co-op. My favorite bit is the framed electrical outlet from Hand of God which an audience member famously tried to charge their phone from.

How to Fix a Split Seat – Finally, Chris Schwartz show his method for fixing a split seat, which can be used to fix any piece of split wood.

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Friday Rehearsal Notes

6 Theatre Workers You Should Know – American Theatre just picked Karin Rabe Vance as one of this month’s theatre workers. Karin is the props master at the Alley Theatre, which just had a major renovation done to their production facilities. Her shop produces some enviable work, and as a fellow S*P*A*M member, she is a great help to the props community.

Designer Lez Brotherston claims boom in theatre admin jobs has taken toll on technical roles – I once walked the facilities of a theatre company which had gone out of business and were auctioning off their building and assets. The admin office was filled with rows and rows of desks; they probably had 30 people working in there. But they had no production or technical workers on staff, and produced only one show a year. I’m sure other reasons exist for their bankruptcy, but I can’t see how a setup like that could ever be successful, even with a constant infusion of cash. Anecdotally too, it seems more and more young theatre artists want to get into the admin side of things, and fewer want to do any of the hands-on work. But ultimately, you can’t get a show in front of an audience by sitting in front of a computer all day or by talking in a meeting. You have to physically build, paint, sew, wire, and source every last bit, and then heft it through the theatre door.

Free Download for Halloween: The Coffin Chapter – Just in time for Halloween, or perhaps for your remount of Christmas Carol, comes this free chapter from one of Lost Art Press’ books. It’s a lot of hand woodworking, but you can easily adapt the instructions to build one with power tools. I’m dying to try this out.

The Humble Book Bundle: Cosplay – If you haven’t heard of “Humble Bundles”, they take a bunch of products and let you buy them all for however much you want to pay, with all the money going to charity. From now until October 28th, they have a bundle of cosplay books, which feature a lot of stuff that prop builders will find interesting. They are all e-books, but it’s very high quality stuff; some of the books have been reviewed here before, and others are by well-known prop builders whose work has been featured on this blog. Check it out before it’s too late!

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The Blog of Eternal Prop Links

Hollywood is Running Out of Tombstones, according to this article from Bloomberg, featuring the world’s worst stock photo. So much film and television is being produced these days that prop rental companies are running out of stock, studio spaces are booked to the max, and production crew is impossible to find. If you wanted to work in props, this article makes it seem like all you have to do is move to Atlanta or Los Angeles. Do any of my readers have any first-hand knowledge to back that up? I’d love to hear about it.

Food styling for photography is always interesting, and Tienlon Ho wrote an article about how it is changing. Gone are the days of mashed potatoes for ice cream. Ho talks with master food stylist Delores Custer about the tricks of the trade and how they are evolving.

Playmakers Rep’s production of Sweeney Todd features some interesting paper masks during the masquerade scene. Rachel Pollack details how the costume crafts shop brought them to life for designer Bill Brewer.

Popular Woodworking has a list of the 16 dumbest woodworking mistakes, along with a link to their magazine article where they go into more detail. Let’s see… yep, I’ve done all of these.

The House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe sounds like an amazing experience. Owned by George RR Martin and run by artist collective Meow Wolf, it’s a massive Victorian house that may have just slipped into another dimension. Reminiscent of Sleep No More, with some elements of Escape Games, the house is designed for visitors to freely roam, explore, and interact with all the props and furniture. It’s a prop builder’s paradise.

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Friday Prop Links

“A prop has infinite possibilities.” This video on how to use props in film is geared toward filmmakers, but it’s great for props people to see how their work contributes to the larger production.

Graham Owen makes bugs for films. Since 2006, he has been constructing realistic insect replicas for films such as The Amazing Spider-Man, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Salt and more. He made the fly in that one episode of Breaking Bad. Talk about a creating a niche for yourself.

Make has 5 indispensable shop hacks. Some I’ve heard of before, others I need to try out soon. They’re mostly woodworking related, but Make has plenty of other articles on shop and tool hacks you can get to from here.

Finally, if you like original movie props, check out Tested’s video tour of Prop Store’s original movie prop collection. One day, I’d like to see a video of someone’s original theatre prop collection.

How-to

Farm Table for Abundance

Last spring, Triad Stage did a production of Abundance, one of the lesser-performed plays by Beth Henley. It was directed by Preston Lane, with scenic design by Robin Vest. One of the main furniture pieces was a giant farmhouse table. I decided to build it because finding a farmhouse table this size would blow the budget, and they are usually pretty hefty.

It needed to be super sturdy but fairly lightweight, because they jumped up and down off of it, flipped it onto its side, and dragged it around on stage. To cut down on the weight, only the boards around the perimeter of the top were the full thickness; the ones on the inside were thinner, with a bit of hidden framing to sturdy them up.

Underside of the table
Underside of the table

The breadboard ends allowed me to hide the different thicknesses of wood used for the top. I positioned the legs so they would straddle the joint where the breadboard was attached so it would not snap off if the actors ever stepped on the very edge.

I also made the legs hollow. They were made from four pieces of wood with mitered edges glued together. To save time, I glued up four long pieces of wood, and when dry, cut it into the four legs.

Joinery
Joinery

The research images for the table led me to a website called “Ana White”, which also had plans for the table the designer liked. I’ve since come across several woodworking forums which resent White’s style of furniture, since it seems to be flooding the market with this kind of shabby chic table that won’t hold up to seasonal changes. Ah well, the look was right, and it was easy to slap together.

Clamp it up
Clamp it up

I experimented with some new (for me) finishing techniques to get a really aged, rustic appearance. The first step was scorching the entire surface with a propane torch and rubbing the charred wood away with steel wool. It took forever; I wonder if an oxy-acetylene torch would have been faster, or if it would have just started an unstoppable fire.

Burning the wood
Burning the wood

After that, I rubbed an oxidizing solution over the whole thing. You can find instructions on various websites; basically, you let a piece of steel wool dissolve in vinegar for a few days. Apply it to the wood with a paintbrush and it starts to darken and grey the wood over the next few hours. Once it was all done, I rubbed a coat of paste finishing wax onto the whole thing.

Final table
Final table

It ended up being a great table for the show. I could actually carry it around myself, though for the show, it was always two actors moving it. It only started loosening up during the last show, after weeks of being tossed up on its side, which placed a lot of stress on its legs.

Abundance
Abundance