Topheavy Wall

[LampofGod]

I'm currently helping out in a local theatre and a colleague member and I have hit a problem: A 15-foot high wall we framed and put some luan on one side, and it was way too top heavy. It is about 16 foot long and moves (it's a castle wall in the first few scenes and then opens up to a castle) upstage when shut and towards center stage when open. We put up the one first wall, and are wary of putting up the second until the first is secured.

I don't think it is the luan, maybe a framing issue? My colleague is putting up the other side of luan today to see if it evens out anything, as the side it's leaning towards is faced. We're also worried about the top bowing.

Suggestions, comments, free power tools, anyone?

 

[Footer]

How is it framed? What is it framed with? What is it hinged against? Putting luan on the other side would help, it will make the unit much more rigid.

 

[techieman33]

Why not cover it with muslin instead to save some weight, also put some weights on the back side of it's support legs.

 

[Van]

When you say it moves.... is it on a wagon? Or is it a "wild Wall" also how long is it ? If it's a free standing wall that just pivots your best bet is going to be to place a solid point secured to the floor, imagine a pipe secured to the floor with gate hinges secured to it and the wall. If it s just a wild wall you'll probably want to build a couple of saddles out of 1/4" X 3" steel to help make "feet" for it. Anytime you have a wall that tall it's going to get top heavy as per the sqaure cube law.

 

[arik52]

The second side of lauan will definitely help, especially if you have joints in the wall. On my current production we built a 12' cityscape out of ten flats that rotates on wagons, which are attached to the floor on a pivot point via pvc piping and 2"x6" with 1 5/8" holes drilled through. Our flats were top heavy as well, but our major concern was the joints because we'd used 8'x4' flats and added on to the top. The second side of lauan pretty much fixed that, though we do have a connector piece of 1"x3" running along the side over the the joint, screwed into the 1"x3" that frames the flat. At to holding them up, we couldn't use stage braces due to the rotation, but we ended up using 6' tall jacks (right triangles) made out of 1"x3" that we just screwed into the flat and toe screwed into the wagon which easily did the trick, and painted the same color as the wall, it disappeared from sight.

 

[cheef]

We had a 14' wall last year that was 20' long. We built the bottom with Hollywood style 1x4s and the top 6' was standard flat design and covered the whole thing in loan. We then had the bottom on casters and the top was hung from the ceiling. The pick line from above only held it up right and then we slid it of stage with the pick line attached to a curtain track so it would follow the movement of the wall. However we had a border that covered the cable.

Just another thought.