How to make a stage

[Oran]

I learnt a few things about the following type of stage design when I made one for the islands book festival. I thought I would share my findings here.

I made 3 separate 8’ x 4’ (2.4m x 1.2m) platforms out of 7 sheets of 9mm structural plywood. The height required was only 20cm so I could divide a sheet of ply into 6 strips to form the support structure.

I initially designed it like the drawing below with 4 supports in each direction 4 x 4’ and 4 x 8’ long.


The problem with this was that the there are rectangular spaces between the supports. This means the load is not shared equally between the long and short supports. As the stability of the stage relies on the friction between the top sheet and the supports I ended up with a stage the wobbled in one direction. I fixed the problem by making another 3 short supports for each platform.

Lesson 1, Always arrange the support structure so that it forms squares.

I cut the plywood into strips by hand so I planed them all to make sure they all had the same width.


This is after I had taken the plywood to the workshop at work to cut all the slots using the crosscut saw. The last bit in each slot had to be removed by hand with a coping saw.


Lesson 2, Don’t cut the slots to half the thickness.

I decided to cut the slots less deeply on the long supports so as not to weaken them and deeper on the short ones. I later discovered that this helps when it comes to assembling the stage.

Lesson 3, Cut one of the end slots in the long supports from the other side.

This helps a lot with the assembly which is done in the following way.
The first short support has the slots upwards to engage with the single downward slot on each long support.

Then all of the remaining slots are facing upwards.

Ready for all the remaining short supports with their slots facing downwards.


The finished stage.