I've dug this set out of the far reaches of my lighting history. :) This was one of the first custom sets I ever made, and to this day still a favorite. I bet it is still floating around Northland somewhere. :)
The basis was pretty simple and has been successfully done quite a few times. I wanted to create a look like versa tubes on a $300 budget.
We nearly cleared our local home depot out of 1.25" pvc pipe. We bought about 125 pieces of 10' pipe.
Our original concept was to randomly place the tubes vertical making a varied backdrop. So to help create this random feel, we cut the pipe into 2' and 4' pieces.
We built a jig that held our 10' pipes and clearly marked where our cuts would be. We then cut all the pipes with a chop saw and a wood blade. I've been told that a concrete blade works better, but havn't had the fun chance to find out if this is true. Cutting with the chop saw wasn't very precise or clean, but extremely quick compared to using a hack saw (how i've always been told to cut it in the past)
Once we had all our 2' and 4' pieces cut, we drilled holes at the bottom and top of all the pipes. Our original plan was to use a drill press the church owns for all the holes. We found that the shop was occupied and that the drill press was being used to make plastic cup telephone sets for kids in kids church. It was quite funny. Anwyays we used cordless drills to drill the 750 holes we needed. It was actually nice day out in the florida sun and breeze.... Good times....
The hardest thing with this set was getting rid of the printing on the PVC. After lots of experimenting with chemicals to get the paint off, we decided it would be best to just paint the pipe with white latex paint. Sounds easy until you realize there is 1250 feet of pipe that has to be painted in 3 passes to get the whole thing covered.
I spent 2 full days (14 hours each) painting the pipes. It was a huge headache and I was covered head to toe in paint by the end.
Lastly we randomly laid out and hung the PVC pipes. We used 30 lbs fishing line (which was hands down my worst set fail ever). After a few weeks random sets of pipe fell, it made for a cool evolving set, but wasn't the best way to go about it.
I think we finished with a cool product for pretty cheap.
