Curtain Repair Near or Around Amarillo, Texas

[Fraghawk]

My school's Grand Drape is in very bad condition. There is a 6" x 6" rip/hole in the center of it and it does not close anywhere close to all the way. My director says she does not know who to call to fix this, and neither do I. Does anybody know of any places that do curtain repair near Amarillo, Texas? If not, is there anyway to fix the curtain so it will at least close properly? Any help will be appreciated, thanks.

 

[LoboLux]

You might want to try Texas Scenic
TSC - Theatrical Stage Equipment

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

I agree - call Roy Harline at Texas Scenic Company in San Antonio. The curtain will be easy - just replace it unless it's under 5 years old - and use IFR fabric. The operation - I'm guessing track - will be tougher. Is this dead hung or on a line set (rigged)? Probably not hard to fix if rigged and you can lower it.

 

[gafftaper]

I agree - call Roy Harline at Texas Scenic Company in San Antonio. The curtain will be easy - just replace it unless it's under 5 years old - and use IFR fabric. The operation - I'm guessing track - will be tougher.

While I agree on calling Texas Scenic. The problem is this is a school. Odds are very high they don't have a spare $20-$40k just sitting around to replace their grand drapes. I've been in a similar situation and if it was up to the school district that dead curtain might still be there. After 5 years of work I managed to get a local arts grant to replace my curtains.

In the mean time I went to the local fabric store and purchased the heaviest thread and the largest needles I could find and just stitched my holes back together as best I could. If your holes are really bad try finding a piece of fabric to patch them with. It's not going to look great, but it's better than nothing. Depending on your district you may have to wait years for a capitol upkeep project to replace the grand.

As for the curtain track, is there a college/university with a big tech program nearby? Call them and ask if there's anyone who would be willing to come help you. The problem may be fairly easy to fix or it may be impossible. Getting someone who knows their stuff in there to look at it would be a huge help.

 

[chausman]

You might also try talking to whomever does your costuming. Our costumer has fixed almost every curtain we own at one time or another.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

Fraghawk - can you locate a tag or label - I most often see them on the bottom hem but could be any any hem - and should give material and flame retardant treatment date and hopefully size. Just curious how old it is. I can usually convince most schools to replace the curtains if they do not meet fire code requirements, much more easily than if it's a blemish issue.

 

[gafftaper]

Fraghawk - can you locate a tag or label - I most often see them on the bottom hem but could be any any hem - and should give material and flame retardant treatment date and hopefully size. Just curious how old it is. I can usually convince most schools to replace the curtains if they do not meet fire code requirements, much more easily than if it's a blemish issue.

That's a really good strategy, although given the current economics in schools know your district really well before you play hard ball. Some districts will tell you, "Fine, take down the curtains or close the theater. We'll let you know in 10 years if we have the budget to replace them."

 

[FatherMurphy]

The chemicals used to make natural fabrics flame retardant can lose their effectiveness over time, it's generally thought that after ten years or so they should be replaced or retreated, but the retreating often is equal to 2/3 or 3/4 the cost of new drapes, and if your drapes are approaching 20 years, it's very possible that nobody will be willing to try retreating, due to the probability of the drapes not surviving the process. IFR synthetic fabrics don't have these worries.

I've sewn up a number of rips and tears in drapes over the years, and it's a bit time consuming, but not hard. Plan on spending an uninterrupted hour of sewing for each foot of rip. I'll use regular thread and largish normal hand needles, with as close a color match as possible, and start with a semi-loose baseball stitch to draw the sides of the tear together and back into alignment. Then, I pin a piece of 2" wide gros-grain ribbon (again, as close a color match as possible) behind the tear and secure the edges with a fairly tight stitch, trying not to pucker the front side. The one thing you don't want to do is to gather the fabric - the flatter things stay, the better the repaired curtain will hang. If no fabric is missing, and the thread and ribbon match well, the repairs can be nearly invisible. Depending on how frayed the rip is, you may need to use scissors to trim some fuzzies. Machine sewing usually mashes the velour down so much that it's hard to hide the stitching.

The 'not closing' issue could be a simple matter of resetting a master carrier. Most bi-parting traveler's pull ropes start at one master carrier (the big double-wheel one on the onstage edge of half the drape), go around the pulleys at the end of the track, back through the master carrier for the other half of the drape, around the pulleys on the other end, and back to the first master carrier. The rope is held to the master carrier by some sort of clamp, the first carrier clamps both ends of the rope, and the other carrier clamps somewhere in the middle of the rope. Assuming nothing else is wrong with the system, if you pull the master carrier with the rope ends to the stop center stage, and then loosen the other master carrier and pull it to it's stop, and retighten the clamps, that SHOULD reset it so that it closes correctly. If not, something else is going on.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

The schools in Illinois get 5 years before they have to retreat. No evidence that treatment lasts that long, let alone 10 years, and testing could be more expensive than replacement, since the field (match test) is discredited and no longer a standard. I too have found that retreatment - if done correctly - is in well over half the cost of new. It's the best case I can make for IFR fabric - which is only a little more expensive than cotton and lasts longer.

gafftaper - I wasn't suggesting "hardball" as you seem to suggest so much as simply being fully informed and informing your (or fraghawk's in this case) supervisor. I'm sure you are not advocating ignorance or withholding information from your employer that the employer's facilities do not comply with the law, just as I would not expect a rigger working for an employer that the fall protection the employer is providing is inadequate or for the school bus driver to speed instead of telling his employer the route is to lo0ng for the time allowed. "Hey my principal, these curtains are shabby and also well past their time for being treated to meet the fire code. Should we just sew it best we can on our time or do you think we might be able to replace these before long?" (I resisted the urge to say "safe" and "for the kids".)

Bottom line - if they don't meet code there is substantial liability and as is clear, replacement now with IFR is probably a better investment than good quality retreatment.


I agree that almost anyone with any mechanical skills can probably fix the track problem. Whether they can do it without falling off the ladder or if the problem is a lighting pipe crashed into it and deformed the track or other permanent defect, I don't know, which is why I asked if it was rigged to lower or dead hung.

I also take note of this being in Texas, where I think by any measure, more money is spent on school theaters than in any other state in the union.

 

[FatherMurphy]

Personally, I tend to think (and write) with future readers in mind as much as the OP for any given post, so there can be some philosophical differences in how I approach a reply compared to some other posters. The OP of this thread might not be comfortable working on a ladder, but a later reader might be more so, so I write for them as well. Likewise, different abilities to budget and purchase will exist between readers. I know of one professional roadhouse that did several million dollars of renovations a few years back, and didn't replace shredded 30 year old goods - they had to put all the money into plumbing, wiring, and HVAC. It's not just a school issue.

The laws can vary from state to state regarding FR requirements, the state I'm in doesn't appear to have any such requirement. In fact, a few years back I had a Fire Marshal for my city in the shop, asking him about this exact subject, and the conversation went something like this:

Me - 'Are there any state or city laws stating how often stage curtains in schools must be tested or retreated?'
AHJ - 'Here's how you do the match test'
Me - 'I know how to do the match test, how often does the law require it to be done?'
AHJ - 'Here's a diagram of how to do the match test'
Me - 'Do any state or local laws say when to do it?'
AHJ - 'Here's a printout of how to do the match test'

And so on... Anymore, I'll do my best to steer customers towards IFR synthetics, unless we're trying to match something existing, just to avoid the future testing/treatment issue.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

I think the laws vary less than the enforcement.

Most national model codes - like NFPA's Life Safety Code and the International Building Code, which both refer to NFPA 701 (which does not permit the field or match test) - simply require the curtain (among other things) to be sufficiently flame retardant to meet the requirements of 701. If there is an incident or if asked by an official to prove it and the Owner can't, the Owner in in violation and at least partially liable.

Since the discrediting of the match or field test in late 1990s, it's been difficult, especially for tours that bring cloth with them. Local authorities often will ask them to prove it and they need a certificate. We specify for new work that the contractor provide certificates. Sometimes they will say for how long the certificate is good, which is usually 5 years. You're lucky if you get 10 or unlucky if there is a fire and the curtains burn readily and contribute to property loss or injuries and death. It is a problem and while I hear some regional areas have convinced the local authorities to accept the field test, that will only last till the next big fire when the field tested cloth burns.

 

[Fraghawk]

The grand drape is rigged to lower and I am ok with working on a ladder. The problem is that presenters that run assemblies are too ignorant or lazy to close it properly, so they just tug on the edges. So the stage left part closes farther than the right side. Our rigging is all hand operated by the way. The curtains are 5 years old, and we just got a new booth and sound system so the district might not be willing to put more money in our audirorium. Does anyone know the best way to lower the curtain? It has about 500 lbs of counterweight on it and I cant lower it any lower than when we use it? I will save those numbers just in case. Thanks

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

If you are not well versed in manual counterweight operation, don't try this, but you basically have to "bury" the curtain on the floor and tie off the line set - lashing hand lines and tying to the lock rail. You may need a hand and if floor is less than very clean you may want to lay down some plastic or something to protect the curtain. It will be much easier to work on the rack. You'll probably want to at least loosen the ends of the operating line from the master carriers and reset those; clean the track (air/vac and a rag with some WD40 is what I have used); see if the wheels on the carriers are gunked up and clean those, and check to see live and dead end pulleys are spinning freely and that the line is not binding or rubbing. This will be much easier if you can lower the curtain, though a good scissors lift you can drive without lowering would be OK.

Of course you can sew a tear or two - and distance is very forgiving - it only needs to be good, not great. If the cloth is cotton and getting fragile all over - unlikely but maybe it's more humid in Amarillo than I realize - then repairing is stop gap.

As to flame retardant, most people and places I am at the rule is 5 years. (These are cotton, right, not polyester that is IFR?) The only way to know is a lab test which is probably 20-40% of the cost of the new curtains, plus you have to find a part of the curtain from which you can remove some samples for the test. (10 samples in the 6 X 16 inch range for one test, depending on fabric weight and lining, could be test method II which is 6 samples in the 5 X 48 inch range.) Not practical but it is the only accurate way to know if they "meet code". You would not be alone if they don't meet code, but if there is a fire, the cost of replacing them will be the least costly aspect of them not meeting code. How long do you drive on tires that don't meet minimum tread requirements? Do you think the people at the Station wished they'd adhered to fire codes? Quoting: "You’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky?"

 

[teqniqal]

. . . basically have to "bury" the curtain on the floor and tie off the line set - lashing hand lines and tying to the lock rail. . . . You'll probably want to at least loosen the ends of the operating line from the master carriers and reset those; clean the track (air/vac and a rag with some WD40 is what I have used); see if the wheels on the carriers are gunked up and clean those, and check to see live and dead end pulleys are spinning freely and that the line is not binding or rubbing.

The process of 'Burying the Curtain' can be a bit strenuous, you have to get the curtain traveling in (downward) as fast as possible, and then, as it starts to gather in a a heap on the stage floor, you (and several other stage hands) need to keep pulling on the arbor handline as rapidly and hard as you can to keep lowering the batten to the point that it is accessible.

With regard to wiping anything down with WD-40 - the answer is: DON'T DO IT. WD-40, and other lubricants like it, just turn into dirt-attracting gunk after the solvents evaporate. Curtain Track Carriers, and particularly tracks, should not require any lubricants. In fact, it may be lubricants that were previously applied that are causing the problem. Curtain Track Carriers are relatively inexpensive. If they are gunked-up - REPLACE THEM. If the track is bent and binding the carriers, then replace the section of track.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

I'll agree that isopropyl would be a better choice than WD40. My real point was cleaning and checking all terminations and attachments will solve many problems. I never think of track as cheap but then I almost use H&H 418PB exclusively - ADC 283R with rear fold guides being about equal - and it's not cheap. The basic 418 single carrier lists at $41.00 and a aster at $92. Assume net is 70% and a typical 63' batten with track has 60 to 64 carriers and a pair of master carriers - over $1900 at net or say $2000 by the time they are on your stage. It operates beautifully and lasts for a very long time.