The Punt Stations

So, another year, another May Ball. This time the theme was Moulin Rouge (I think), and although my wife was staying well clear my work the previous year had been noted, and I was asked nicely if I could contribute to the decorations again. My strengths had clearly been identified as large wooden things, as the request this year was for two canopies, broadly mimicking the elaborate Paris Subway entrances at such as at Abbesses. One was to sit over the stairway down to the punt shed, while the second would straddle the gap in the wall further round the college. In both cases they'd lead to the riverside where punts would shuttle people back and forth to the islands.

Abbesses Station
Steve Cadman under CC license

No construction photos this time I'm afraid, so I'll just throw in some photos from the night. In fact I don't really remember to many of the details of construction, except that it took a lot longer than I expected as I just made it up as I went along rather than trying to design anything at the start. In fact on reflection I probably could have saved myself quite a lot of time by spending a few hours on a decent drawing.


Both stations were assembled in my back garden, then dismantled more or less to the individual bits of wood and driven to the college (any larger and the pieces wouldn't have fitted in my car). I'll never forget the look on the decoration committee's faces when I unloaded what looked like a huge pile of scrap wood. An hour or so's work had them together again though, followed by a coat of paint and stretching some polythene sheet over the top of each one.


One of the key objectives was to keep them high enough to stop people from touching them - I didn't want any drunk students trying to hang from them. I don't remember the exact dimension but I think both were around 3m tall - the smaller one in the staircase was built in two sections, with the bottom section providing a false bottom step. The larger one had two legs which were clamped to the wall next to the river, then the main canopy which was bolted on top. It took three people to assemble the larger one.


Some photos from the night. From what I remember it rained a bit during the night, but I'd managed to get the polythene fairly taut and so no puddles formed on it.


All photos by Tom Cryer unless stated otherwise

The Hollywood Sign

When my girlfriend (now wife) and I moved to Cambridge, she got involved in the Darwin College May Ball committee. Specifically, she and three others were in charge of decorations, based around the theme chosen for the ball: Hollywood. During a brainstorming session in the bar I suggested making a Hollywood sign which could be placed on the banks of the island directly opposite the college buildings - at the time I had something covered in small bulbs or LEDs in mind, although thankfully that was dropped for just pointing a spotlight at it. Anyway, as I had suggested it, I was duly delegated to help build it.

After deciding that the letters should be 3 feet tall, we started by cutting out sheets of hardboard to form each letter. The first few are shown drying below.

The plan was to mount the letters above the bridge which connected two of the islands - this would be inaccessible anyway during the ball, and meant we had something solid to fix them to. The first design braced the letters from behind using a couple of strips of wood. I hoped I could get away with painting this black and leaving the letters white, and with a bit of luck no-one would notice on the night.

Two of the committee members carry half the sign to trial fit


The trial fit in all its glory!

In the end I decided the strips of wood would be too obvious, given that we were planning on shining lights on it. So design #2 built up a framework below the sign, and fixed each letter to this framework vertically. The framework could be as messy as I wanted since it would be hidden below the railing of the bridge.


The completed sign, with its proud builder


The sign on the night.

Introduction

Okay, so I've had a bunch of photos kicking around my facebook profile for a while now of some of the projects I've built over the last few years. Facebook isn't really the best way to present this sort of thing though, so I'm going to move all the photos here. Then maybe I can include some explanation of what they were and how they were made, and update for any future projects.

So first up, the Hollywood sign.