Almost every scenic project requires suspending some sort of scenic element --- a process that can be scary and dangerous, especially in churches. Many times technical artists and volunteers are charged with designing and building these scenic elements, and they often become frustrated at the seeming lack of information about rigging and rigging hardward. This leads me to the question that all of us ask sometime in our scenic life, “Why does suspending scenery have to be so hard?” There is no doubt that gravity is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. But our finite, little brains seem to be predestined to repeat our mistakes. This is one reason that scenic life can be soooo stressful!
One reason churches often have great difficulty with scenery is that most of us don't use it enough to continually get better at making and using it. While it may be difficult, as technical artists we must consistently and continually invest in ourselves, constantly improving your skills, techniques and knowledge of hardware accessories that can make life so much easier --- even those techniques that we may only use a few times a year. In addition, this knowledge and techniques can lower cost and save you time.
As a scenery professional who works on rigging and set design on a daily bases, I've found many improvements in rigging hardware in the past few years --- hardware that can help a church with the hardships of using sets and scenery pieces, improving the visual execution and increasing the safety aspects. Here are a few of my favorites:
Using gripper gliders and aircraft cable can create the illusion that a heavy scenic piece is freely floating, unanchored by gravity.
At Willow Creek, we frequently use aircraft cable to suspend scenery from the fly system battens. The stranded steel core adds strength and flexibility to the cable. Aircraft cable is classified by the number of strands in the cable multiplied by the number of wires in each strand. For example, the notation 7x7 indicates that the cable has seven strands made up of seven wires in each strand. We use 1/16-inch 7x7 black coated galvanized aircraft cable for most of our scenic needs and 1/8-inch 7x19 black coated galvanized aircraft cable for much heavier projects. Be sure to check with the manufacturer specs on the breaking strength, and then factor in a 5:1 safety ratio. As an example, if 1/16-inch cable is rated 480 lbs breaking strength, divide five into 480 to get 96 lbs as the dynamic weight limit for that cable. If your scenic piece weighs 120 lbs, you would need two 1/16-inch aircraft cables to support the weight.
Another one of my most used pieces of hardware in rigging is called a cable glider. A glider is a gripping mechanism for aircraft cable that locks onto the cable by ball bearings and can be easily move anywhere on the cable by pressing the quick release plunger. You can easily adjust the glider several feet, or just a fraction of an inch. This makes hanging scenery quick, accurate and saves a lot of frustration when repositioning something zillions of times. Just as with aircraft cable, gliders are rated by the breaking strength of the glider with the 5:1 ratio to be applied. As an example, if the glider is rated at 300 lbs breaking strength then the dynamic weight limit is 60 lbs.
Using gripper gliders and aircraft cable can create the illusion that a heavy scenic piece is freely floating, unanchored by gravity. Cable gliders and aircraft cable are designed to improve our rigging endeavors by making suspending scenery, and then adjusting heights much easier.
Hopefully you will see this article as beginning steps towards improving your staging and rigging craftsmanship. Skimping on hardware, or not doing something properly is not smart, and it could wind up killing someone. As a church we want to lead people to heaven, inadvertently, we don't want to hand them an express ticket. Just remember, safety is the most important thing.
Editor's Note: The writer will go into detail of creating cable ends using swages, thimbles and crimping tools in a future article.
