Christmas Designs

Wire Trees

Matt Ludik at Grace Family Church in Durban, South Africa brings us this wiry tree for their 2011 Christmas design.

This tree was 6 meters high when completed.

They made the trunk first by using riveted/shaped steel strips, and reinforced it with a trussing core on baseplates.

For the branches they started with some old rusty mild steel rods that were given to them – and got a metal-worker in their church to weld them before painting them. The length and weight of the rods meant they ‘bowed’ more than they anticipated when installed which necessitated adapting the design a little.

They secured the rods in three height rows around the trunk, then cable-tied over 300m of fairy lights to the branches.

They patched all the lights to dimmer channels. They had to ‘load’ every channel they used as the dimmer didn’t like dimming less than 100W LED loads. So they ended up with a bank of heavily-gelled PAR56 cans backstage!

Free Music! Diffuse the Light Boxes

3 responses to “Wire Trees”

  1. daniel says:

    can I get alittle more info about this trees I like the idea and would like to have more details

  2. Matt says:

    Sure. Ask away.
    You can get me at matt@grace.za.org

  3. Roberta says:

    Good day Please cna you assist me, i wouldlike to enquire approximatly how much did it cost to create this tree.

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