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Author Topic: "Semi-permanent" hoist - light duty - suggestions?  (Read 5318 times)

Kit Hannah

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Re: "Semi-permanent" hoist - light duty - suggestions?
« Reply #10 on: July 04, 2007, 09:06:17 PM »

Yes, thanks Ron, I did see that, but monkey-assing a chain to hold everything up is going to leave 2 options...1, you'll still have chain cming down somewhere, or 2, you'll have to use a ladder.

If you wan to get really trick, you can go with this system they have in the National Guard base here - they have 10 ton moving winches along I beams that are controlled with a wireless remote. They use them to pick up their hellicopters. Very cool stuff, but probably just a couple of dollars out of your budget...
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Ron Hebbard

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Re: "Semi-permanent" hoist - light duty - suggestions?
« Reply #11 on: July 04, 2007, 11:00:53 PM »

Kit Hannah wrote on Thu, 05 July 2007 02:06

Yes, thanks Ron, I did see that, but monkey-assing a chain to hold everything up is going to leave 2 options...1, you'll still have chain cming down somewhere, or 2, you'll have to use a ladder.

If you wan to get really trick, you can go with this system they have in the National Guard base here - they have 10 ton moving winches along I beams that are controlled with a wireless remote. They use them to pick up their hellicopters. Very cool stuff, but probably just a couple of dollars out of your budget...


Hi Kit;

I don't think you're understanding what I meant, it took two passes for Tony to catch on.
I'm suggesting one small chain motor or chain fall is brought on site and used to lower his truss, or pipe, in to working height and then to fly it back out to trim whereupon the chain motor or chain fall is removed and taken off site.
The load is supported by the motor or falls when in and deaded off to an adjacent wall or column when at working height.
The motor or falls stay at floor level and pay out upwards to lower the load.

Back to your #'s 1 and 2;
- 1; No, no chain coming down only chain going up and only while the load is in and not when the load is out to working height.
- 2; A ladder, or such, would only be required for the initial rigging but not after the installation.

Possibly Tony can explain me better than I can, one can hope.
Maybe Tony will let us know how he makes out.

Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
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Tony "T" Tissot

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Re: "Semi-permanent" hoist - light duty - suggestions?
« Reply #12 on: July 04, 2007, 11:30:48 PM »

Ron -

You have that correct. And thanks for the direction BTW. At no time (save for raising and lowering) will a hoist be in the equation. When flown, the load will be tied off and bolted (upper chain link through thimble of the fly lines, bottom chain link through steel rail.)

I have run into a bit of a snag, however.

I had access to two stage side walls.

- SR I deem insufficient to hold the load, even though it is "always" going to be less than a quarter-ton load. Drywall with aluminum studs. No access to the slab below it. I am not worried about me - but someone inevitably follows that will want to hang the house from "Sunset Boulevard"

- The second (SL) wall has to be torn down and rebuilt due to a very interesting interpretation of the purpose of the wall and it's fire rating by our local (and now out-of-a-job) fire Marshall.

I may have to route the lift blocks straight back to the rear wall to the head block. The rear wall is pre-stressed concrete and will accept epoxied bolts to hold a rail.

I dislike this approach because it adds another set of blocks to get to a single thimble, but it is probably safest. And of course additional line sets would be limited to only one more.
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Ron Hebbard

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Re: "Semi-permanent" hoist - light duty - suggestions?
« Reply #13 on: July 05, 2007, 12:22:02 AM »

Tony "T" Tissot wrote on Thu, 05 July 2007 04:30

Ron -

You have that correct. And thanks for the direction BTW. At no time (save for raising and lowering) will a hoist be in the equation. When flown, the load will be tied off and bolted (upper chain link through thimble of the fly lines, bottom chain link through steel rail.)

I have run into a bit of a snag, however.

I had access to two stage side walls.

- SR I deem insufficient to hold the load, even though it is "always" going to be less than a quarter-ton load. Drywall with aluminum studs. No access to the slab below it. I am not worried about me - but someone inevitably follows that will want to hang the house from "Sunset Boulevard"

- The second (SL) wall has to be torn down and rebuilt due to a very interesting interpretation of the purpose of the wall and it's fire rating by our local (and now out-of-a-job) fire Marshall.

I may have to route the lift blocks straight back to the rear wall to the head block. The rear wall is pre-stressed concrete and will accept epoxied bolts to hold a rail.

I dislike this approach because it adds another set of blocks to get to a single thimble, but it is probably safest. And of course additional line sets would be limited to only one more.


Hi Tony!

So you've met the house from 'Sunset' have you?
20,000 pounds of 'house' and 20,000 pounds of counter-weight, 20 tons of live load.
Also interesting your mention of tieing back to the upstage wall as this was where the house's counter-weights were located in New York, Toronto and Vancouver.  I suspect this was also the case in the L.A. production but I had no involvement with that one.

The shop I was with at the time built the 'On The Road' fly-pieces for Broadway, Toronto and Vancouver but had no involvement whatsoever with the L.A. piece.

Normally when you arrive to deliver an 11,000 pound fly-piece, you're installing the heaviest flown piece in the show but not with 'Sunset'.  At 11,000 pounds, our piece was number three with the 14,000 pound pool surround and the mansion outweighing us.

If you saw the mansion, did you see the grid and the mods made to support all of this extra weight?
A nice piece of work, a very nice piece of work.

Based upon our work with 'Sunset', our shop was selected to build the two touring decks and the mansion for the U.S. National tour.

You've taken me back eleven years and thanks for the memories.

Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
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Tony "T" Tissot

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Re: "Semi-permanent" hoist - light duty - suggestions?
« Reply #14 on: July 05, 2007, 01:11:08 AM »

Ron Hebbard wrote on Wed, 04 July 2007 21:22

So you've met the house from 'Sunset' have you?
20,000 pounds of 'house' and 20,000 pounds of counter-weight, 20 tons of live load.


Yes - but as a 1 time west end, nine-time NY audience member (Lupone in London, Close and Buckley in NY). All the while as a California resident. Backstage time courtesy Broadway Cares, and a personal bribe to the stage manager (his Charity BTW) who remembered me from previous tours.

For some reason then - and still to this day - I count SB as the show that really remade musical theater. Spectacular set, superb music and a story. Too bad it never made a dime! I have never been a fan of the Les Mis/Evita/Lion King/Phantom school of nonsense musicals. I thought, I still think, SB was markedly different.

This is the show that drove me back to doing "semi-pro" equity regional design gigs.

I remembered the 10 Tons for the house - but not the 5 1/2 for the car sequence. I did look at the grid (could not see much and did not get to climb it) and the backstage wall.

I had never imagined counter weights that were expressed in Tons before.
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Ron Hebbard

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Re: "Semi-permanent" hoist - light duty - suggestions?
« Reply #15 on: July 05, 2007, 04:03:49 AM »

Hi Tony;

Just a few 'Sunset'-isms from memory.

In an oversimplification, the flying of the mansion was akin to the world's largest flying drawer slides with the mansion itself forming the drawer.

There were something like 5 or 6 pairs of hard legs.
Three of the legs on each side, all of the odd or even numbers, I can't recall which, had full height 'I' beams on their on-stage edges.
These 6 vertical 'I' beams began in the basement, ran up through the stage, through the touring deck, through the theatre's own grid and on upwards to create two additional custom grids above the original grid.
The tops of the 6 'I' beams were tied side to side and U/S - D/S between each other and on out to the side and U/S and D/S walls for horizontal stability.

Standard flown items were on the original grid.
Heavier pieces, like the pool surround and our 'On The Road' piece were one level above the normal grid.
The mansion was supported from the top-most level, I suppose primarily to provide clearance for the rigging and the diagonally routed support cables.

On top of each of the six vertical columns was a massive sheave on the order of 24" to 30" in diameter and grooved for a single 1.125" cable.  Could've been a 1.25" cable, don't whip me, it was a while back.

Across the centre of the U/S wall were two massive beams supporting six more sheaves serving as headblocks for the counter-weights.
In plan view, these six sheaves were angled towards their respective column sheaves which were, of course, angled towards their headblocks.  
This meant that the six supporting cables ran diagonally across above the uppermost grid from the columns to the headblocks.

On either side of the stage, supported by 3 cables each and captured to the vertical columns by a myriad of casters, was a huge mothering horizontal 'I' beam running U/S - D/S.
These two beams formed the flying portion of the 'drawer slides'.
The mansion formed the drawer.
Opening and closing the 'drawer' allowed the mansion to track U/S - D/S whether in the air or, seemingly, on the deck.
Flying the 'drawer slides' flew the mansion.

The mansion was pretty massive, not only in weight but in height, width and U/S - D/S depth as well.
When the mansion was flown U/S and out to it's high trim, it occupied so much of the stage tower that it contained elements of several LX pipes underneath it within it's raked floor.

Rigging was by the fine lads from Feller Precision.

The mansion flew with the motivation of a redundant pair of hydraulic motors driving either end of a common drive shaft through a matching pair of planetary gearsets.
The drive shaft was USC essentially serving as the 'idler block' for the mansion's counter-weights.
The 'line lock', as it were, was a single disc brake in the neighbourhood of 3' in diameter near the centre of the 'idler shaft' with a redundant pair of hydraulically actuated calipers.

Since you saw the show, you know the mansion flew in and out complete with cast and crew on board.

The 1st National U.S. touring mansion was a pretty good trick too but nowhere near the scale of the permanent rigs.

Sorry to have droned on and, again, thanks for the memories!

Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
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