[delraydella]

This was a project I just finished up last week, a set of 4 stair units and railings for a new North American tour set by a brand new boyband RnB act. I don't know if these guys will ever make it into the bigtime, but you never know! The plans called for 4 independant step units with removable railings and plexi ramp supports between, along with 4 sets of removable railings for the upper deck.

To begin with, steps can be a major pain to layout in wood, much less square steel tube. If your angle is a little off, the whole unit can get thrown off in terms of rise and tread level. It's not too bad correcting stuff like that when you are dealing with wood, but steel takes a lot longer to cut and if the angle is wrong, you've basically wasted the whole day and a ton of steel. Fortunately, now, there are quite a few programs available on the web to help with stair layout. This is one of them...http://www.blocklayer.com/stairs/stairseng.aspx there are many more, some better, some worse.

The first picture show why i like using plywood tables for layout and welding. I was able to mark the height and length of the units and clamp the stringer, riser and tread pieces right in place to get the right cut angles.

The second picture....once the correct angles were established, the step risers and tread supports were cut and welded together.

The third picture...since every riser and tread piece was already cut to the right angle and welded together, it was just a matter of spacing them out on the stringer, clamping them down and welding them in place

[Otto Nobedder]

Nice work.

How are you posting those pics? Do you have an image-hosting source, like I usually use? Or are you sending them as attached files, somehow? (they appear as "attachments" on my browser)

Steve

[delraydella]

Here's a few more pictures......
#1....The stringer pieces joined together with more square tube. Besides strenghtening the entire structure,these connectors also give the roadies something to grab onto to carry the units. The wood piece is a temporary stretcher until some x pieces go in the middle of each unit.

#2....Almost finished. The step treads are aluminum bleacher seats that are tek screwed to the square tube tread supports. The next step is the removable railings. I took a picture of the steps with the railings on them, but for some reason i can't get the picture small enough to post. The railings were all interchangable to any step unit and fit into three tube holders that had a bottom stop welded on them. The tubes and railings were all drilled through and secured with a scaffolding type drop pin. The original plan called for all aluminum railing, but budgets can get cut quite a bit in this business so i wound up making them out of thinwall galvanized fence tube. That really sucked, but they come out pretty good. All the railing joints were saddle cut for a nice fit up.

#3.....The finished product onstage!

[delraydella]

Otto/Steve,

I'm posting them through this site from "My Pictures". When you hit "reply to post" look down and you'll see a tab that says "Upload attatchment" click that, hit browse, go to my pictures and double click the one you want to show. They have to be under a certain size or they won't post.

.....and that completes my knowledge about posting pictures on this site.....

[Otto Nobedder]

Thanks.

I feel a bit silly for not having spotted that before. I'd always used the [IMG] button on "post a reply" to refer to a hosting site 'til now.



Steve

[delraydella]

No problem! Glad I could help with my limited knowledge of posting!

When you go to post pictures this way, you have to make sure they are under a certain size (250K??? something like that) You'll get a message in big red letters if the file is too big and will not post. I try to avoid that altogether if I take project shots to post by setting the camera to the smallest image size beforehand. It saves a lot of time and aggravation rather than trying to go back and resize all of the pictures through some editing thingamajig.

Steve (delraydella)

[Ultralow787]

Steve,
Looks great! How are the aluminum steps attached to the steel stringers?
What happens to this stuff after the show? Is it re-used, or cut up for scrap?
Seems like your job would continuously be changing! You would never know what the next day or week would bring your way! And, that to me, would be a good thing!

[Otto Nobedder]

So, what's the name of the band?

[delraydella]

Thanks Ultralow!

The steps are screwed down to the stringers. Originally, the plans called for an aluminum "L" to be screwed onto each tread support and then weld the steps to the "L" piece. I didn't like this idea from the start, mostly because there were only 4 small points of contact on each side of the step. No one really knew how long these guys would be out on tour with this set, and things like this have to be built to take an extreme amount of punishment. They are continually being slammed in and out of trucks, thrown on the ground during setups and teardowns, run into by forklifts.......you name it, it will happen to them. The last thing anyone wants to have is a stressed out aluminum weld break on the road or worse yet, during a show and someone gets hurt. Sometimes there is a carpenter on the road with them that can weld and maybe fix things but we never really count on that. If a screw breaks, big deal, anyone can fix that without specialized equipment.

It's hard to say what happens to this stuff after the tours finish. Sometimes its scrapped, sometimes it gets reconfigured into a different set, or it might sit in someones warehouse and rot for the next 20 years. Once it goes out the door, we hope to never see it again, unless of course it's in a picture!

And it is always something different every job, that's for sure! It's never been boring.

[delraydella]

Steve,

I have no idea. For reasons that I've never been able to figure out, producers of shows will always give the shop the least amount of information that they can. Maybe they figure we will want more money if we know it is for someone famous......??????