@Painterspoon
I believe several of us pointed out you can
hand cut a
gobo from a much larger blank so it serves as both a
gobo and its own holder. Of course you loose the ability to rotate, invert, or
shift the
gobo relative to the holder but it's definitely the cheapest way to go if you're on an extremely tight budget. Local stores used to sell aluminum foil oven liners three to a package. The largest oven liners would provide enough
flat aluminum to cut 9 or 12 self holding
gobo's per liner / 27 to 36 per 3 pack of the largest liners. I'm suggesting the large, rectangular,
shallow liners cooks use to collect grease drippings in the bottom of ovens. Being in Peterborough, you should be able to find affordable, light
gauge, aluminum liners in any Home Hardware or Fortino's. If you watch for sales, aluminum liners can be purchased at extremely low cost. If you're going to
hand cut,
knock out something really quick and dirty if only to drive it into your head that you have to cut your
gobo's upside down. As one poster pointed out, if you're working with
gobo's in holders, you can always invert them and flip them over front to back / left to right. If you're cutting your
gobo's from rectangular pieces of foil such that they're integral to the holder, obviously no relative motion is possible other than flipping them front to back equating to left to right.
As you're involved with
theatre in Peterborough, you don't happen to know Al Tye?
Decades ago, I was best man at one of Al's marriages.
All the best.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.