Well I don't often post about what I am up to but thought I would give you a bit of what I am doing right now.  I am working on refurbishing some Christmas tree body puppets.  We are working in the warehouse where they are stored during the year.  This first shot is of the space from front to back.

The show stores both props and costumes on this area so you are seeing up front some of the props along with some of the stage flooring.

This second shot is our work area in the back of the warehouse.

You can see the trees stacked up that I am working on.  They are in four parts.  Two parts join and become the body that is worn and then the other two are joined and worn as the head of the puppet. The "branches" of the trees have started to collapse and some of the seams are starting to come unglued.  These are around 10 years old so they need some love.

This one of the lower sections from the inside after part of the referb. You can see we contact cemented a cotton duck strip down the seam of each branch after we had re-glued the seams that had parted. We also inserted triangle foam supports on each branch to help bring them back into shape. There is also a metal ring that gets glued back into the bottom of this to help shape things up. It was held in with cotton straps and we changed them out to leather straps. I thought I took a shot of one with the hoop in but guess I didn't.  I'll try to remember tomorrow.


Well that is what I have been up to for the last two weeks.

P.S.  These are made out of the EVA foam I am always talking about. They are 1/2" foam.  The triangle blocks are 2" foam covered on one side in green felt to help "hide" if they tip up a bit during performance.

Thanks Shawn.................. This sure brings back memories for me when I worked for a company out of Orlando Florida who did this type of stuff and decorated malls. We would go in after other companies had really did a bad botched up job at storing them and would have do some serious repair work. I wished I was there to help Shawn.................. that is right up my alley! I have to say that is a pretty clean warehouse ................. you would not believe where we would find stuff stored.

Billy D.

Looks like a playground to me!

Wow! Can't wait to see the finished project!

Ok here are some more pictures.  First there is the picture with the two hoop supports glued in with via leather straps.


Ok now we have a shot of the Contact Cement that we used.  There are two in in the shot.  The first is my choice for a contact cement and is called Barge. It works great on foam, leather and fabric.  The second one in the shot is called Jet Set and is something new that we where trying out.  We found that it worked pretty well on the EVA foam but when we tried to use it to glue fabric to the foam it did not hold well at all. Both are used in the shoe business to glue soles on shoes so you need to seek out a shoe maker or store that sells supplies to them. You can find smaller tubes of the Barge at store like Home Depot some times.


Another contact cement that works pretty well is the 3M brand and it is pretty easy to find at places like Home Depot.  It is not pictured above because... well I had Barge and I like it better.

When I was in the Air FOrce, I was an Orthopedic Technician, we used barge cement all the time for gluing appliances (shoe and brace stuff...not washers and dryers...lol)

Very good stuff.

Shawn, that's a big project...do you have a crew? 

That area would make a GREAT workshop for me...lol... unfortunately the bigger the room the more stuff I want to STORE and the workspace gets smaller and smaller...lol

Dennis

How cool Shawn!! Oh Barge how I miss thee.....I have not used barge in years. I still prefer it I think.

Dennis,
There is a crew of three of us, but for the most part I have been working on the trees.  I had help for about two days at the first and then the last two days I have had help also.  They are all done now and look pretty good.  The structure is way better now and I think they well be able to get another 10 years out of them.

Jay,
There are others that work pretty good and I have actually also used 3M contact cement and the water base products, but still prefer the Barge. So what are you using now?

Thanks for sharing Shawn.....keep up the good work.

Daryl H