Recent content by jwolfkill

2 thoughts:1. In general, larger diameter wheels have lower rolling resistance than smaller diameter wheels, all other things being equal.2. Remember that inertia works both ways - objects at rest tend to remain at rest and objects in motion tend to remain in motion. Building a wagon to...

I'd say go with any wire that will hold the coil shape you need. Actual razor wire doesn't have barbs, and the barbs on barbed wire are pretty small and hard to see from any distance anyway. The movies have conditioned us to pursue a level of detail that often isn't necessary in live theatre. If...

Do you really, really want LEDs? Have you considered other options, like color scrollers? LED technology is still evolving, and even a large budget for purchasing LEDs will buy less now that it would a year from now. Color scrollers, with all their well-known disadvantages (noise, cost of gel...

To be more specific, a "point" is not just "something in the overhead". It's a structural component that has been designed (or approved by a structural engineer) to support a point load (i.e., all the force exerted by the load is concentrated at a very small area). A typical application (the one...

I like MarshallPope's idea of just making it a simple wooden beam or log. IIRC, this scene occurs when Jean Valjean is mayor of Montreuil-Sur-Mer, which is a coastal town on the English Channel, so a length of Sonotube dressed up to be part of a timber mast for a ship (wrap some rope around it...

Typically the only place that individual feathers on waterfowl are distinguishable at any distance are the trailing edges of the wings and sometimes the tail. Given that a dead swan's wings would probably splay out as it is dragged by its feet and the tail would probably be noticeable, too, you...

You didn't really say what KIND of trouble this actor is having with the "tricky language" in her lines.Is she struggling with remembering the lines? It really isn't fair to the rest of the cast to call brush-ups for her in that case - it's up to her to know her lines.Is she struggling...

That space between the back end of the handle and the back of the housing is intriguing, and it certainly looks like one could use it to hang this light on the edge of a piece of 1x lumber or a steel plate or beam. But the possibility of portability doesn't jibe well with a yoke that looks like...

Yes, indeed you do have problems if you have to be concerned about whether the spotlight is watertight:Boat under a bridge - YouTube

Duh . . . saw the holes in the one photo after I posted. The biggest doubt I have about my theory is that most towboats have had their spotlights mounted outside the pilot house for a long time now - they're generally controlled remotely from inside the pilot house, either mechanically or...

This looks a lot like an older marine spotlight. Where I live, we see them mounted on towboats. The pilots use them to pick out bridge pilings and other obstructions, so they're insanely bright and very tightly focused to project the light a mile or more. I suspect that it would be mounted...

Re: Bent PipeI'm very interested to hear about this! I'll be waiting for your post . . .

Ditto this - if you can spare the instruments and circuits, you could use different colors and positions to strongly suggest time of day or night - amber gels at an angle for morning or evening, no color from the top for midday, blue gels for moonlight.Also, for daytime scenes, some subdued...

Interestingly, I have both run carbon-arc followspots and worked in a booth that still had the fireproof shutters over the projection openings. Those shutters looked like they could decapitate anyone who had the misfortune to be leaning out of an opening when they deployed!And I'm 42 (not...

Yeah, they conveniently left out any photos of the 45-pound ballast. I used to have to lug those things up about 50 concrete steps to the spot positions in the arena where I worked. I always wanted to find the guy who thought it'd be funny to make the handles on the ballasts out of old steak...