WTF?

Ok, it occurs to me that I have been a bit vague about this phase of the Fez-o-rama booth.

If you scroll way the hell down to the beginning of this blog you will see TofuJoe's excellent idea for the new booth. Now while I do plan to one day implement this, it will have to wait until I get my hands on a rolling mill to produce the rings needed. In the mean time I had been trying to work out how to make the top open like an umbrella. Ease of set-up/strike is very important to our booth designs.

Then one day I read a Humu Kon Tiki blog about a Tiki Central post by Sabu The Coconut Boy regarding the 1962 Hawaiian Pavilion at the Seattle World's Fair. (gotta love the cyclical world we live in)I don't know what it is about that roof but it has haunted me since seeing this picture.

So here is the idea. Find an umbrella to mod to imply this roof line. Well I couldn't find an umbrella with 12 spines (what we determined to be the minimum needed) so the next thought was to take two umbrellas with 6 spines and meld them together. One trip to Big Lots later and I was the proud owner of two mod-able umbrellas.

First Joe and I broke them down and worked out how to do the mods. Luckily the construction was quite simple. Plastic housings and tie wire. So Joe cut 6 more grooves into the cap.
You can see one of the handmade cutouts in the center of the photo.

We assembled both of the lower sliders onto one pole to allow us a bit of adjustment if needed.

To create the up/down of the original roof we needed to move the pivot of the upper set of spines. We simply drilled out the rivets and moved the hole back on the spines.
Finally here is a shot of the frame open
and one closed. As you can see we would need to make a few more cuts to allow the frame to close more but it works as it is.

So there you go, all caught up now.

Frankenbrella

Work continues on the new addition to the Fez-o-rama booth. The Umbella frames have been dismantled and are currently being assembled into a Frankenbrella! Now I just need to pick up some hardware to replace the rivets we drilled out.

Update

The exploratory surgery on the first umbrella has begun but not too far.

I'm afraid this project may get sidelined as many things have come up that need my attention. Worse case senario we roll out the current version of the booth with a tarp for shade. Let's hope for the best.

Umberellas!

Well I picked up two market umbrellas to warp into one Frankenbrella. I'll take some photos of the experiment.

Mission Tiki expansion

Well, we have our next public event: Mission TIki Drive-in http://tikiinvasion.com/
This time we will be outside. We may actually attempt to build the rest of the booth before then.

We'll have to add:

• 4 more cases
  
• curtains to hide storage
  
• a center post for the umbrella like roof.

We've even talked about getting some floor mats to lessen fatigue for the sales staff (I try to stay out of their way when they are working)

Home Again

We're back and truth be told the booth worked out great. I'm really happy with how it packs up. The backdrop worked out great. Lighting was a bit spotty but that was taken care of by a mad dash to Target.

I'm actually ready to get back to work on it... Just over two months until the Mission Tiki event!

...

Retro-active posting!

Yes. Despite not having posted about it, Sunday did indeed occur. No need to throw away your calendars, they still work.

Most efforts were spent on finishing(?) touches on the sign and working on product. Now that we are in fact only a few days out on this shindig let's look at where we stand.

Booth

• needs to be packed -never made any cases for the tops but they should be ok this time.
• there are still a few things that could be tweaked but I have no time or energy for it now.
• Lighting - I have no idea if Joe will have something for this but we will have at least Troy's light.

Sign

• need to fill the bases with cement or something
• perhaps a few more finishing touches on the aging if there is opportunity

Everything else has come together pretty well. Most of the product is ready to go and while i will be working right up to the last moment, that is really no shock.