ANY manufacturer of stage rigging equipment WILL ship to Utah. After all, you, as the purchaser, are the one paying the freight charges. Which will, in all likelihood, be more than the cost of the materials. If these are to be used with a counterweight fly system, they need to come from the same manufacturer as the arbor, as there is no standardization.
Which will, in all likelihood, be more than the cost of the materials.
icewolf08 is in SLC and could probably help you with local sources...
I've also seen weights made from inner tube. Cut an inner tube into two or four pieces. Take one of those pieces and sandwich one end between two short pieces of 1x4 and screw them together. Fill the tube with sand and do the sandwich trick on the other end. It should weigh about 30 to 40 lbs. and is curved so it will fit over a jack.Great idea, that sounds like something I could use!
A few thoughts - the rigging manufacturer we are dealers for only sells counterweights in 1,000 lb increments (although I think you can mix 1" and 2" weights within that, irrc), and the final cost is somewhere in the $1.50 to $2 per lb range, not counting shipping. Getting weight cut locally saves both freight and allows you to customize the amount you're buying. Many manufacturers flame cut the bricks from sheet steel, how jagged the edges are is a function of how well they dial in the torch. Cutting the bricks from bar stock and milling the notches gives a smooth finish, and water jet cutting is also an option. Bricks used to be cast iron, but cut steel is slightly denser, stronger, and easier to work with given today's manufacturing methods.
Taking a brick to the machine shop is the easiest option. If you have to measure the arbor rod diameters and center-center spacing for them to draw and build, make sure they cut things a bit bigger, so you have some clearance to work with. Weights that wedge at a diagonal inside the arbor are no fun at all.
Most new installations I've worked on have supplied somewhere between 65 and 80% of full arbor capacity as the amount of counterweight, under the assumption that since you'll almost never load everything to full, why pay for and store the extra bricks?
One thing to avoid is trying to weight the lineset with anything other than counterweight bricks. Over the years I've seen everything from sandbags to manhole covers tied to arbors to get a little more weight into the equation, but all you do is risk a tangle overhead, or damage and danger from overloading the rest of the components of a lineset.
Is there some reason why sandbags would not suit your purpose?
You can buy well made bags in different sizes, have them shipped empty, and fill them with clean builder's sand from a local supplier.
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