Lighting the scene
Staff Show & Tell
George Dent has been making use of the winter evenings by installing a backscene and lighting rig to ‘Lisburn Lane’.
An essential job that needed tackling before the layout could progress involved getting the curved backscene into place. My Tim Horn laser-cut plywood baseboard features a ‘scenic box’ with a front pelmet, but I try and avoid square corners in backscenes whenever possible, as they tend to create shadows and visible edges in the ‘sky’.
A curved backscene requires a flexible material and I’d been assessing my options for a few weeks. A brief experiment with a cast-off roller blind offered potential, as the pale grey/ blue, water-resistant fabric looked to be perfect. Once tacked in place, though, I really wasn’t sure. Instead, I resorted to my tried-and-tested use of flexible MDF and, luckily, my local branch of Wickes sold it in 4ft by 2ft sheets.
Like all MDF products, it needs to be handled, cut and installed carefully, not least owing to the toxic nature of the dust that’s created during sawing and sanding. Flexible MDF features rows of half-cut grooves on the rear face, which allows the material to flex, but this also seriously weakens the material.