Hardcover Periaktoi Help

[jmg957]

Hello, newb here, middle school theatre teacher and director, with very little tech background.
My theatre has been using inherited flats but I wanted to make my own hardcover periaktoi for this year. Looking for any guidance/tips, particularly with joining them together. We have material to make 4×8 flats with plywood covering - how do we join them together afterwards?

 

[dbaxter]

You join them together first, then cover them. Having just made 2 for a production of Clue, here were my steps: Start with a base triangle, in your case 4x4x4. Next add your 8' verticals, we used 2x2's because they had to support a door on one side and an arch on the other. You could use 1x if you have solid walls. You'll find you need them inside of the corners by their thickness. That should allow you to screw thru one into the other. If you need them exactly 8' high then the edges will come to the edge of the triangle. Now you can take a 4x8 sheet of luan and have the corners meet. Have your people take a little care moving them as the corners are unsupported for a 1.5" or so. A little Frog tape on the corners and you should be good. We put 3" furniture sliders on the bottom of the triangle for movement. Again, if you need exactly 8' high, account for 3/8" thickness of the sliders. There will be pictures of the Clue set in a week or so. (9 doors, 2 periaktoi, 2 book flats - crew and I are tired)

 

[StradivariusBone]

We built a few sets of these a few years back and I used loose-pin hinges to join the flats together. Built triangle bases out of 1x and put casters on it. The bases were just a bit smaller than the flats so it fit inside them. Then we attached a piece of 2x horizontally kinda like a ledger board on the back of the flats so that it would rest on the triangle dolly and float a 1/4" or so off the ground. It was nice because they were pretty easy to assemble and stored pretty well when done.

 

[Catherder]

If you do use casters - I dig @dbaxter furniture sliders idea - I would use fixed casters and not swivels. Line them up right - parallel to the opposite side of the triangle - and you’ll get a nice smooth circle. Swivels will want to wander all over the place.

There are some other good threads on periaktoi here as well - hit that search bar. And welcome to the Booth!

 

[Lasermike]

Children's theater volunteer here. I inherited a set of 8' tall by 32" or so wide peri and made a pair 10' tall to match. At that narrow a base, they tend to be quite tippy. The 10' always have at least 20 pounds of sand in the base and the 8' get ballast if the floor is uneven or it may be the littles interacting with them. I dig @StradivariusBone take on how they are mounted on the base, ours just screw through the face and over time, the material breaks down due to the number of holes. The ledger does add to the thickness during storage but would make assembly so much easier. Without it, it's a gamble whether or not they will stand vertical or tilt off to one side. Our design is basically a flat with the long edge cut on whatever angle makes the 3 corners meet at a point. This does not give a lot of material for screws, I wish they had been designed to use loose pin hinges. Ours are on 3 swivel casters, they get pushed all over the stage and sometimes off stage during a show so none swivels would be a nightmare. If you only want clean rotation, the fixed casters would make sense. The original bases were made with 1by. No idea how that made sense, driving a screw through the face of a flat and into the edge of a 1by isn't easy to say the least. I need to remake them with thicker material and maybe figure out hinges.

Here is a gratuitous picture of my truck with a 10' peri in the back.

Michael