We are building our STAGE this weekend. Curious about feedback from teams that have done this…any feedback? Recommended mods? Sage words of advice?
I’ve seen the truss versions and we are looking into that but more curious about what has worked/not worked with the team version.
On top of that… did anyone find out what to do with the top part that Andymark sells?
We’re building the same team version this week.
I liked the stage version that 3847 and 1619 were building, but decided we couldn’t justify the additional cost when we were buying lumber so we will try the FIRST provided one above. We may re-evaluate as we’ve built the remaining 3 elements utilizing some leftover lumber from prior years and we may have enough to attempt a more realistic structure.
We’ll be building the team version, since it’s flatter in profile and thus easier for us to store when we’re not using it. We don’t have a permanently setup practice field, just a space in the school’s atrium where we can roll out our carpet and setup a half field during our meeting times that we have to take back down each time. So compactness of the field elements is pretty important to us. We have storage next to (and in) the atrium, but the space is limited and this overrides other considerations.
We modified the top cross support piece to allow the note to actually drop fully through the trap. This involved cutting out an opening in the top and bottom plywood braces of the upper trapezoid section (as wide as the trap opening) and shortening the 2x4 at the front edge to move it make so it now is the rear edge of the opening.
Having the note be able to fall all the way through seems like it’s important.
ADDENDUM: Now I’m worried we were wrong on that - need to super review the trap mechanism to make sure we’re not changing behavior. We’ve been knocking out field elements all week and maybe we just got plywood-blinded…
ADDENDUM ADDENDUM: From looking at the field components again, the note does drop though the trap “door” into a lower receptacle so I think we’re good with what we did.
Zog,
Thanks - I think I follow. A “cutout” roughly where my red rectangle is and shorten/moved the 2x4 back to the back edge of the cutout area?
Boom - that’s what we did. The unmodified lower shelf catches the note but it can drop through the area you marked after manipulating the door.
We added a short chunk of 2x4 on each short side of the cutout to fully enclosed the opening as well.
Thanks! Great feedback!
We’ve also built it. After ordering the 4x4x10s necessary for the legs, we could of gotten away with the 2x(2x4) version instead as a small cost saver. Otherwise we will also be cutting out a slot to help the note fully fall through the trap as needed.
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