Woven Wood

Chess Hoyle from Forest Hill Church in Charlotte, NC brings us this awesome wooden design.

From Chess: This set is an homage/reimagining of The Weave, a set by my good friend Jeff Abbott. I wanted a set made of wood, but didn’t want to use another pallet wall design (4 years ago our set was featured on CSDI). I started toying with the idea of large planks arranged in rows. After some concept design and experimentation, I decided to go with a design that has rows of planks stacked in one direction, with every other row alternating. Three planks face left, three planks face right, then repeat.

The great thing about this set is that while there are a ton of fun lighting possibilities (based on whether you light it from the front, the back, or the bottom), it’s also visually appealing with regular fluorescent light. This means that the stage can still look appealing when the room is hosting an event that doesn’t have full production.

The set is constructed of 43 planks of 1’ x 12” x 8’ lumber. Each row is fastened by threaded rod and washers/nuts, then secured to a lumber grid on the back wall. 33 planks make up the 11 rows in the back, and 5 planks on each side panel (the side panels create a “backstage” area that hides our stage rack and hazer). The total cost of the set was around $600 (1×12’s, 2×4’s for framing, and hardware).

If I were to build it again, I’d probably do some sanding to the planks to hide some of the imperfections from where the wood was strapped together. If I ever want to “refresh” this set without doing a full set change, I’ll probably wind up staining some of the planks to add some variation in the wood.