I am indeed referring to ideas about a top/finish skin that would sit above our
deck of 4'x4'(ish) stress skin
stock units. We switched over from a 4'x8' framed
stock unit to the 'Triscuit' design in the Yale Tech Brief many years ago and absolutely love them. For lots of reasons.
We have successfully skinned them with and 1/8" single-sided tempered
Masonite hard board which required more brads in the floor, as we would sometimes get buckling from painting/moisture. If we were very careful to allow enough
spacing between Maso sheets we could avert that issue but there are still thousands of brads to be pulled out of our
stock triscuits after each production.
1/2" even 3/4"
MDF has worked extremely well and won't buckle with moisture conditions and because it's so dense, a few
brad nails are enough to keep each piece from sliding around and we have been able to illimiate the need to space out the
MDF sheets -- the designers love the clean seamless floor. The shop guys however are sick of lugging around the heavy
MDF and are on the verge of revolt...
We have even had DECENT success with 1/4"
Luan plywood in a pinch though it is NOT durable enough for heavy dancing and tends to crack and start de-laminaing under hard casters under heavy loads.
We will use the same full sheets of WHATEVER material over and over again throughout the year, sacrificing several sheets for contouring to each show's needs. So I'm hoping that maybe there is some fun idea I haven't thought about that would give us durability, not buckle, and not weigh a ton. Or is what we've been doing pretty much on
track? Thanks for input so far --