Stage Designs

Hanging Salvage

Curt Bledsoe and David Wells from Bethel Baptist Church in Galesburg, IL brings us this great salvage stage design. (originally February 2016)

For this design, they used corrugated tin and barn wood. Thankfully, they had access to a 100-year old barn and the owner donated all materials. Some of the tin was very rusted. This added a very interesting design element. They roughed up some of the ends of the barn wood.

They used graph paper to lay out the various pieces. This gave them a guide for cutting the wood and tin. New chain was used as a design feature to contrast with the condition of the wood and tin. The pieces were laid out on the ground before they were hung.

Since their series was on the book of Micah, they used their logo from their graphic designer on 4 joined pieces of barn wood, accented by a few pieces of tin. The logo was projected onto the boards and then painted. A palm sander was used to rough up the paint.

Existing lighting was used to light the set and bring out the various elements.

Total cost: $350 for the chain and hardware.
Total time: About 8 hours with 5 people (not counting actually going out to get the wood and tin)

Back-side-view

Boards-and-tin-laid-out

Center-sign

Chains-back

Close-up-of-connection

Front-up-view-center

Full-view-crosses-dark-2

Full-view-with-Micah-screen

Hanging-tin-2

Micah-sign-no-lettering

Barn Fragments Flowy Night Sky

12 responses to “Hanging Salvage”

  1. Mike says:

    No No No, Zip Ties are not rated for rigging. Please don’t show unsafe practices or others will follow suit. This should be a quick link (http://goo.gl/kkgzHZ) or something else that is not a tiny plastic bit hold the load.

    Besides that it is a cool look.

    • Curtis Bledsoe says:

      The zip ties we used are rated for 700 lbs and we only used them to attach the tin(about 2 lbs.) to the chain. We used quick links and locking carabiners for the rest of the connections.

      • Chris says:

        I would also recommend changing those out. It isn’t that they won’t hold the load, it’s that if something were to happen and a sharp piece of metal fell on someone on stage you would have a terrible time and law suit on your hands. Just do what you can to avoid all this stuff.

  2. Jim says:

    It looks like it would be an easy fix to swap out the zip ties for nuts and bolts. Sometimes you need to over-engineer things so that there is nothing that can be questioned after the fact. For example, suppose there was a fire that melted the zip ties.

  3. The design is awesome, I really like the way you constructed the crosses, very cool

  4. eddie butler says:

    Very creative and original design. The 2 crosses are especially well done.

  5. Larry Young says:

    Love your ideas and creativity! The front of the sanctuary where I attend is very similar to yours.
    Was this only up for a short amount of time or is a more permanent installation?

  6. We used this set for our inspiration for our Get Dirty Series. We made a few modifications to the layout, and it turned out great. Thank you! Christina Roberts Cross Point Church Ava, MO

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