Arrival 8:00am
I knew Richard was keen to be finishing the build so I wanted to be in nice and early to get things done. The first taste of the day was to create a platform for the wheel to be mounted on with castors so it can be moved around the stage to be more dynamic and versatile during the play. We made a simple roller box (not the technical name) with 6 x 1 reinforced with some joints and then attached the heavy duty castors.
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| A lovely rollerbox. |
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| Bolting in the castors with enough room to fully rotate. |
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| The wheel in place on its rollerbox. |
The next task that needed doing was to clad the perimeter so the MDF was hidden, this was an easy job but took time as each piece had to be measured and hand sawn then draw knifed then attached. It was worth it though because it really tied everything in together and it looked brilliant when we had finished.
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| Clad perimeter |
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| Finished wheel! |
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| Detail of the lovely joints. |
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| We then put on some really long arms for the bucket and rope to go over. |
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| Tying the pieces together |
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| Breaking down detail |
I was so proud once we'd finished the wheel. It felt like we were really on our way to finishing the build and it looked great. It is fully transportable, nice and big and spins! It even makes a lovely heavy creaking sound when it rotates. I really hope the director, Sean, uses this to it's full potential.
The next job is Richard is going to make a lovely rustic ladder, and I'm going to start cutting the 6 x 1/2 down for the floorboards using simple maths and a tape measure. The floorboards wont be laid until Monday because of the lighting rig, so I have numbered each piece so I do not have to waste time putting a jigsaw puzzle together on Monday when I need to be working on A Soldier's Tale.
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| Richard is going to make a ladder. |
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| Looking pretty good!!! |
We also had Debs Mitchell, the scenic artist, in to start the paint team off. The first thing they did was the rostra, and it looks absolutely brilliant! Exactly like the model. It's really coming together now.
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| The rostra painted with some of the floorboards. |
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| Alice and Julia doing a marvellous job painting the wheel. |
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| Brilliant! |
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| Richard's ladder (which injured my hand!) |
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| Housing joints |
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| Paint detail on the wheel |
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| Progress on the wheel |
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Rhiannon testing out Richard's ladder, it's secure!
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Richard and I also put up the courtinerie wire for the curtain to be hung onto, and making sure that was taught enough was hard work. It was also very nerve racking securing the dog clips as I was very high up! I learned about the difficulties of dog clips and Richard taught me how to secure a wire into them.
It's the end of Day Five and I'm really starting to feel the strain. Every muscle in my body aches from all the physically hard work I've put in but I'm still really enjoying myself. I'm learning so much, and it's the kind of work that just makes sense; I think it's because I'm quite logical and mathematically minded. I'm picking things up quickly and really enjoy making myself useful and keeping busy with it. You can see from the picture's below that Richard and I are nearly done with everything we need to do, just a few more finishing touches to do tomorrow. Having the painter's in has really made the set come alive, the realisation from model to structure is unbelievable! I'm very proud of Rhiannon and all her hard work to make this come together.
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| Stage Left (unpainted) |
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| Stage Right (painted) |
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| Nearly nearly there!!! |
