HELP ON KICKED IN DOOR

[stevea66]

Hello.

My designer is having trouble with a door that needs to be operational for a while, then gets kicked in. It opens onstage. It's opened four or five times prior to when it gets kicked in, and is then off its hinges for the rest of the show.

It'd be best if it could get kicked in and not fall flat straight downstage. I can have the actor manipulate it. For example, hold the handle while he kicks it off its hinges, then grab it and throw it on his way in.

Just having trouble making it solid enough to use AND then kick off.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[venuetech]

I would think modifying the hinge pin somehow may work for you.
or create a split casing with a threaded insert on the stage side and a long bolt on the off stage side. the bolts could be removed just before the effect.
what have you tried?

 

[jamesarnold140]

Hello.

My designer is having trouble with a door that needs to be operational for a while, then gets kicked in. It opens onstage. It's opened four or five times prior to when it gets kicked in, and is then off its hinges for the rest of the show.

It'd be best if it could get kicked in and not fall flat straight downstage. I can have the actor manipulate it. For example, hold the handle while he kicks it off its hinges, then grab it and throw it on his way in.

Just having trouble making it solid enough to use AND then kick off.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Is there any reason that the door frame could not break loose with the door? Mounting the frame with velcro or possibly small breakable dowells would give you a functioning door until a hard kick broke out the supporting hingesand door together. I would think keeping the set stable would be a very important concern in a scene like this.

 

[ajb]

[-]Two [/-] Three ideas come to my mind:

1) Use loose pin hinges, with the pins linked to a rail which slides in the casing. The rail can be actuated manually or pneumatically to slide the pins out of the barrels just prior to the door getting kicked in.

2) Mount the hinges to blocks that slide into the casing from the operating side of the door ratained by pins. Pull the pins, and then when kicked the blocks slide out of the frame along with the door.

[EDIT:]3) Maybe you could adapt an electromagnetic door holder like these to hold the hinges in the frame. 35lbs of holding force translates into a ~160lb 36" door if the top and bottom hinges are 7' apart. However they're probably limited in shear loading, and I'm not sure if there's a good way around that.

 

[shiben]

Can you change the staging of it to not have it come off the hinges? In my experience (done this a few times), kicking a door will mostly just break whatever is holding it on the handle side, and the door will pop open rapidly. Kicking a door off its hinges seems a dicy proposition, unless there is some sort of assist (battering ram, breaching shotgun, explosive breaching devices), at least in real life. That might be a lot easier to build to work, otherwise, you could try hooking the pins to a piece of line and pulling them out real quick before they go through the door.

 

[kendal69]

Take out the door pins and replace them with nails that fit the hinges but loose. Solder a wire to the top of both nails and at the right time have someone just pull the pins and the door will cave in.

 

[BrockTucker]

Take out the door pins and replace them with nails that fit the hinges but loose. Solder a wire to the top of both nails and at the right time have someone just pull the pins and the door will cave in.

Or just tie on a piece of monofilament (fishing line) that you've painted with watered down black paint to take away its shine.

 

[thenelsontwins]

Agreed. Pulling pins is easy, but the hinges are on the onstage side.

We have built several of these and the simplest and least complicated way we found was to mount the door hinges to an inner door jamb within the door's opening. The hinges were mounted to blocks that slid into pre cut slots in the new inner door jamb and were held in place with drop pins on the upstage side so they could be pulled by a deckhand.

Basically the same as pulling the pin on a loose pin hinge.

It was completely repeatable and easy to handle.

We also built one after the set was constructed and ended up just cutting out the rail of the flats around the hinge and faked in a similar device as described above.

I can throw together a sketch if you need me to.

[email protected]

 

[DuckJordan]

something to try, (i've never tested it) cut a correct size dowle down to the approprite length for the pin on the split between the door and the wall hing make cuts half way through the dowel so you can still use the door but when you go to kick it in they break away as if there wasn't any kind of hinges present. It may or may not work but its a thought.

 

[shiben]

something to try, (i've never tested it) cut a correct size dowle down to the approprite length for the pin on the split between the door and the wall hing make cuts half way through the dowel so you can still use the door but when you go to kick it in they break away as if there wasn't any kind of hinges present. It may or may not work but its a thought.

I was starting to think the same thing, use a breakaway instead of a pin. Wooden dowel rods ought to be fine, or possibly a very brittle plastic.