Wagon brakes

[Van]

Here's a question for discussion, over the years I've gone round and round with the concept of the best type of deice to use as a wagon brake. I've used Destacos, I've used pressure stops < the ones that mount on doors> and drop bolts. To me drop bolt are a pain in the butt, too hard to line up consistantly. And it seems to me that even on the high end on friction locks , destaco, etc., there is a lot lot left to be desired. No matter what I try they still seem to slip around at the first hint of lateral motion. What have you used ? What do you like best?. Come on carps and T.D.s lets get as active as the hum heads and sparkys

[Footer]

Personaly I favor drop pins if possible to use them. I have the same feeling you do about Detasco's brakes, unless you lift the casters off the floor there really is not much that they can do, then you get the famous shimmy. Personally, my favorite brake is the air caster, but thats for another day.

[ricc0luke]

I'm with you on the air casters footer!

I was recently worked with a guy who used blocks of wood and crow bars. Each set peice has 2 blocks and 2 crow bars used to set the peices up on the blocks for the scenes. While I prefer other methods, it worked extreamly well, AND it was exceptionally cheap.

[soundman]

Big fan of the air lift castors here as well. Where I worked over the summer had a set based on the Bell design. This semester I built some for my school and for the musical they worked like a charm. There was alot of dancing on the platform so if we had went with the traditional brakes we would have seen a lot of shaking going on. Once the ari lifts were deflated they platforms were as solid as a rock.

[Van]

I'm currently in the process of trying to convince the company here to retrofit an air lift caster system here. we have "movable seating" Yeah ten I.A. guys and 8 hours but it is movable. Side note, I just finished "Metamorphosis", we had to lift the seating 2'-9" off the deck to accomadate a 4'deep pool in the center of the room.

[soundman]

Let me know if you have a good way of cutting 6" PVC I was not happy with how I ended up doing it.

[Van]

You meant beside the H/V bandsaw ? Well there is this other method I know of where you build a hog trough mount it on a board at a 45 then use it like a miter gauge against the fence, I'll draw a picture. and post it it's easier that way.

[soundman]

I ended up doing the hog trough routine when I built them as the shop lacks a horizonatal bandsaw. What I didnt like about it but the shop did not have a saw with a blade big enough to make the cut in one pass requiring me to spin the PVC as it was getting cut.

[jwl868]

For the pipe cutting, a standard pipe cutting tool (such as listed in McMaster-Carr) goes up to 6" diameter pipe.

Joe