Set Design and Construction: locking casters

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locking casters

Printed From: Community Theater Green Room
Category: Producing Theater
Forum Name: Set Design and Construction
Forum Discription: Post your questions or suggestions about designing or building a set here.
URL: http://www.communitytheater.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1891
Printed Date: 5/03/24 at 3:50pm
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Topic: locking casters

Posted By: Rachgrrl
Subject: locking casters
Date Posted: 6/18/06 at 7:52am

Is there a cheap and easy way to make sure that my bed set piece does not jostle around after I use locking casters? I am building two single beds that need to slide into one piece after Intermission and then roll back into the wall. They use the beds quite a bit, and the stage is very near the audience so I can afford any play in the wheels.

Any suggestions to using casters or tossing casters altogether would be useful.

Replies:

Posted By: castMe
Date Posted: 6/18/06 at 10:28am

I am assuming you have the bed set piece on a castered platform.

If so, there is a piece of door hardware that screws to the bottom of the door. This door stop has a slide with rubber at the bottom. You step on the slide, down it goes to the floor, and it clicks into place. The only time we don't use this hardware is when we require absolute silence during a change, but we often change with some music, so it's usually not an issue. This totally eliminated our need for locking casters. Now we only buy fixed or rotating as needed. Benefit: You can lock your plat anywhere. Downside: You still have to hit your spike marks

If you can drill into the floor, consider using two pegs on the upstage side to keep your platform from moving. Benefit: You always lock your platform in its spiked position. Downsides: Many of us can't drill into our stage floors...after a time your pin hole tends to get bigger and your plat will drift....harder to hit your spike because your aiming for a specific point in space rather than a general area.

Another thing we've done is to use furniture slides. These metal or plastic units are designed to be hammered into the bottoms of sofa, chair or table legs so as to not scratch hardwood floors. When the platform was fairly light and we had a large enough crew, we'd use eight or ten of those buggers tacked to the bottom of the platform. Benefit : Much cheaper than casters Downside: Needs more labor to shift the scene.

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Posted By: Traitor800
Date Posted: 6/18/06 at 1:46pm

Im not a huge fan of those funiture slides cause there not ment for heavy use so they tend to rip off during the run of a show and then you can scratch up your stage.

theater supply stores sell something similar to those door stops, their called stage brakes and their nice cause you screw two into your platform and then the bottom is threaded so that they can be fine adjustesd so that you can set them so that you just take the pressure off the wheels so that the platform doesnt move. Their also spring loaded for quick scene changes.

Posted By: bmiller025
Date Posted: 6/20/06 at 9:07pm

Definitely use stage brakes. They are cheap, last forever, and do what they are supposed to. They are also a whole lot easier to lock and release during scene changes.

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