Baker Stage Phase 2

Rob and Dale finished up the Baker stage project a couple of weeks ago. It turned out just beautiful and the school is very happy with it. It has taken me a very long time just to load all the pictures of the process so I won't go into too much detail. I'm just always very impressed with how good Rob is at what he does.

The upper stage has many obvious similarities to the lower stage, the main difference being the addition of adjustable legs. Dale does most of the metal cutting while Rob does most of the welding:


Rob is having too much fun with his fancy new welder and it's starting to show with all this practice he's getting. Like the lower stage, there are strange angles that need to be custom cut and welded:



Gloria enjoys working on her own projects with left-over scrap material. In these picture she is working on a hardwood floor for her Barbie house:

We've been putting Zach's muscles to good work on this project:

Gloria helps, too, when it's her idea. . . she really enjoys being around Rob while he works:

Once the legs were measured, cut and welded. . .

Dale painted them. . .

. . . and added numbers for ease in setting up the stage and tearing it down in the future:

The legs need to be adjustable, so each leg is fitted with this handy little nut/bolt set that will allow each leg to be individually adjusted:

Putting these together was a perfect job for Gloria:

Each leg will be held tightly in place with another nut/bolt operation (I have no idea what the real terminology is, so I have to make it up as I go!):

This allows for ease in putting in and taking out the legs when needed:

After the frames and legs are ready, the templates are laid over the sheets of hardwood to cut the perfect edges for the perfect fit:

It has to be exactly right in order to fit against the existing stage:

It's nice that "shop class" is built right into Zach's life this way!:

The wood has to be routed exactly against the template. A single mistake could cost $100 and several hours. Luckily, Rob is darn good with a router:

All ten decks have to go through the process of being measured, cut, routed, sanded. . .

. . . drilled. . .

. . . riveted. . .

. . . puttied. . .

. . . and lined up with the deck it will be installed against. . .

. . . in order to ensure the exact curve that will eventually butt up against the existing stage:

Several of the decks were over 10 feet long so they had to be carefully pieced together in a strong yet un-obvious way:

This was pretty tricky since the edges are custom cut rather than factory cut:

Since these extra pieces are right in the middle of the decks, they had to be reinforced on the underside to protect the integrity of the wood (I don't know if that makes sense, but it sounds good to me):

When all the parts were pieced, all the cracks had to be puttied and sanded:

This process took longer than Dale and Rob had planned but much went much quicker than the realist in me had predicted and they loaded the truck and headed back to Baker:

This pictures shows the orchestra pit stage the Rob and Dale installed last month:

I can only guess at the order of things here since I wasn't there, but it's pretty obvious by the pictures.

The original stage needed to have quite a bit of work done to the edge so the new stage would fit safely against it:

It looks like a perfect fit:

The underside of the "feet" on the legs are carpeted so the lower stage won't get all scratched up:

These "coffin locks" were routed into the existing stage and will lock the two stages together:

After the stages were perfectly fitted, Rob took a router and shaved off the ends in a perfect curve. The stages still had to be re sanded and painted before the final install:


I haven't seen the stage in person yet but the pictures are sure impressive:

The view from the existing stage out into the audience looks like the two stages are one continuous stage. (The yellow flags are there to keep people off of the drying paint):

Even though it's been a huge amount of work, Rob has really enjoyed this project. I know I'm impressed.

We still need to go back in a couple of weeks and put on the stage drape and the stairs and then we can check a huge project off of our to-do list!