out of the woods

So into the wood finished a week or two ago and my life is getting back to some kind of normality and MAN IT IS BORING!

I did have  a case of computer death to keep me occupied this week : after hours of plugging  and unplugging cables and with the help of Mr H (retrieving my hard drive data)  and an hour onto technical support *cough my dad* ( always good to have  a dad that is an IT technician) we worked out that the IDE cable was shot and needed replacing!

So she lives to fight another day let us hope that she will troop on for another year at least!

other than that,  playing portal2 co-op with the lovely Mr D and undead night mare (I admit I do miss my PS3 gaming when I have a show on!) and sending fundraising letters I have not been up to much.

So I will rewind a few weeks and tell you about the adventure that was the into the wood set build!

The final built set designed by claire browne

I feel that the final piece did not reflect how much hard work went into it ... but then again maybe that is the point you want people to comment on the set but not make it too distracting from the actors i guess, but over all i was please with the team and what we achieved. i want to say Special thank you to my build team  - you know who you are - and i could not have done it without you and i hope that you have forgiven me for when i was shouty!!

The Set build was split up into sections to make it a little easier (we  had little storage and building space) 

The steps (cheeses as they became known!) were made from 18mm MDF in modular wedges. one piece that was a 1200mm equilateral triangle with a curved edge and then 2  rectangle made up the sides. Each step was made  200mm higher than the last. Starting at 200mm reaching 800mm  with struts in each cheese in the to give them support. 

they were then bolted together to make the circular shape on the day. Almost made the school boy error in construction terms of building and gluing the 800mm high step before checking that we could get it out of the door...we would not have been able to get it out of the door so that was a close one (i am pretty sure we would have got thrown out of the set build club for that one !!!!!)

Picture of cheeses

 'y' shaped bracing added support to the middle of the  steps.

The Swing - cheated a little with this one and bought the frame from a well known toys store, then it was just a case of  attaching the tyre. Ah yes the tyre a salvaged item which still had the hub attached to it... so set off trying to pry it off- but this was a new fangled tyre that was moulded to the metal centre with out the special tools brute force and ignorance came into play and i cracked open my Stanley knife and finally got the tyre free 

victory was mine!!!

meh they have been dirtier!

it was now just a case of attaching the tyre to the and the chain to the frame. On the day of the build we sawed off the legs at a jaunty angle and to make it a little easier for the narrator (who was 10 years old) to get in and out of it as it was his 'den' and the frame was painted to make it stand out a little from the sea of leaves.

LEAVES! the leaves were all cut from books - (i know i know!) but mostly old text books that were soursed from a university library and they were then cut  up on the band saw, when this started to heat up a little we all got the scissors out! Once cut (i think we did about a hundred books)  they all had to be flamebarred  which was messy and tedious- never again!

The flame bar did curl the leave which was a nice effect for the vines

close up of leaves,

            

The tram poles were made from 2 aluminium scaffold bars, brackets, tie wire and clips. Simple but effective the vines that covers most of the set were made from the paper leave threaded onto ordinary garden wire which enabled the vines to hole a little bit of shape.

The junk pile consisted of a traffic light, old speaker, shopping trolley, road cone, street sign (painted MDF) this represented Cinderella's mothers tree in the play.

The in was made from 9mm MDF with chamfered edges and then painted to look like the Nottingham city bins by the talented Jayne Riddle.

 

After it was all built we headed as is tradition to the pub. it was odd and felt a little anti climatic especially after all the hours of hard work that went into it as mentioned before. 

so it was soon over and i went to see it on opening night and i was a little happier seeing it lit. Then came the strike which always comes too soon, but i do not get too sad when i take down sets.

The following Saturday we had a build team BBQ just to round it all off and so i could thank everyone properly as you can not build a set without a team!

in true British fashion it hoofed it down!! 

that did not deter Mr D though and the BBQ gods rewarded our persistence with some sunshine!!!