Breaking the rules theater build - Page 7

Made some progress last night. Need to get some velvet to get'er done. Hoping to find something at Jo-ann's this weekend, if not I have a couple of on-line alternatives.

So I got to assemble the basic structure. I attached the 1X4's to the horizontal pieces as I described above. Then I attached the vertical frame pieces.
The first side attached.



Other side attached and stood up to see how stable it was and get the actual finished height.




Laying back down with the side border pieces on. They are not attached as I want to get the velvet first so I can best figure out how to wrap.


Won't get to do much in the next couple of days, but Friday night I hope to secure the screen track and by Saturday get the velvet, quite possible that it will be done by the end of the weekend.

Thanks jjmj427,

Basic 16:9 projector with a anamorphic lens (will stretch the image horizontally by 33%). I have an Epson HC400 which does not do vertical stretch which is required to get rid of black bars on a 2:35 image. So I picked up a KeyDigital HDMI4x1 which offers image scaling as well as switching (the older model, new only offers switching).

I am making my own lens with prisms which I bought a while back. They come from Surplus Shed are made of BK7 glass and offer coatings on the sides to help reduce reflections.

This is a thread I started when I first got them in the 2:35 DIY section if you want more info.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=889863

Thanks Jamis,

When I first started out my whole budget for the entire build including the rest of the basement was 10k. I knew then I was gonna be doing a lot of stuff DIY. Well that budget came and went but I'm probably at about 16-18K including the seats.

I've had many ideas of how to make my screen and initially I was thinking metal frame that I could try and get from a local metal fabricator, but I saw a few folks over in the 2:35 section making their own frames out of wood with good results. I knew I could work with that and figured for short money I could give it a whirl.

The most nerve wracking part was trying to make the curve as smooth as possible on the 2X8's with the jigzaw. Once I got past that it's been getting easier. Nice to finally get it out of my head and into something physical.

I definately know where your coming from as far as being impatient, especially with painting, hate it the wife usually does all the cutting.

On my initial cut I had some of that with the blade in some areas. I stayed away from the line a bit though because of that and to make sure I wouldn't stray the wrong way. I easily shaved it closer and took care of any angles with the hand plane. Slow and steady with other pieces and really wasn't an issue. The 1x4's definately work out the rest of the imperfections, can't wait to get it done and take it for a test drive.

Thanks, the plan is to use some vinyl screen track from Lowe's,also available at HD. This is the type screen track you use to enclosed a screened room or 3 season porch common here in New England. Being vinyl it is flexible and it has two channels in order to spline the screen material into. I will try to spline first the outermost channel, then the inside channel to add more tension and make sure the material in nice and tight.

The second channel could also probably be used to add a layer of material in case the phifer allows thru unwanted reflections.

Finally found something online of what the track looks like.

http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?actio...n/PchScrn.html

http://images.lowes.com/general/p/porchscreeninst1.jpg

Look at the last 3 pictures on the link. The first 2 show the screen track, the last one is a cover decorative purposes which I am not using.

Edit found a picture by itself and also another source for the track with a picture at an angle as if your looking at it from the top edge, with the cap above it.
http://cj.shop.com/SCREEN_TIGHT_BASE...21.shtml?trk=1
As you can see in this latest pic the screen material would normally come from either side, but I'll be splining the phifer into both grooves from the same side.

If your at all handy it is definately worth the time. It really didn't take much time at all to create my enclousre for setup and testing. In less than a weeks time after work, I was able to make a horizontal expansion and a vertical compression enclosure. I still have it in pieces because I wanted to store away the prisms while I finished my room's construction. I will shortly be making a new enclosure because the first time around I used hobby wood which was a little thinner than I would have preferred. Next I'll use 1" thick lumber.

I had very good success and results with the prisms. With My long throw helped to get everything squared up pretty good. I know some folks in that thread had some issues, but for the cost of these prism's they are tuff to beat as long as they fit your projectors beam. The coating on them is excellent. I placed one of the prism's on it's side in front of the projectors beam to see the amount of light reflection shinning thru and their was nothing but a black shadow showing on the temporary screen I had at the time. I had my projector on a box on top of a chair, the lens had to be tilted to square things up, other then that no major problems.

Got me all excited now, need to get my screen done so I can get my lens back in action to watch a movie.

Hey Dave, thanks for dropping by the thread. Hope all is well with the new baby, mom and the big sister. How's the new job and neighborhood treating ya?

Actually my throw is close to 1.6X the screen width. I know some len's work best with a minimum throw of 1.6 but they're ways around that. I think I could have gone with a straight screen with that throw, but really like how a curved screen looks. A curved screen helps with the pincushion that results with a shorter throw. So don't let it hold you back, at least not till you know for sure it won't work. I know it a ways off but, if know already, how far would your projector be and what size screen are you thinking of?

Working on the screen some more today, starting to really come together. Hope it will be done soon. Snapping some pics off to post later on. Went looking for velvet yesterday, Jo-ann's was supposed to have a 40-60% off sale on just about everything in the store. Unfortunately the velvet wasn't on sale. They had a basic velvet for $10.99 a yard which was ok. Then they had some other velvet which was called Empress velvet I believe. That stuff was awesome, it was silky smooth, wrinkle free, looked to be on par with Fidelio velvet I believe it was made by American Eagle. However, the cost was definately a factor $24.99 a yard, and I just had a hard time wanting to spend that without getting some sort of discount so I passed.

On the way back to the highway their is a Super Wal-Mart so the wife said lets stop and see what they might have in their fabric dept. I thought it was worth it to take a look.. After looking around for a few minutes and getting ready to just about give up, my wife found some velvet. This velvet seemed very nice, not as nice as the Empress but somewhat nicer then the $10.99 velvet from Jo-ann's. The kicker is, it was only $5.75 a yard . Man I love getting a good deal.

Sweet Dave, hope it works out for ya.

Thanks for dropping in Brian D,

As far as balancing time out for work and enjoyment of the room, its not bad at all. I'm motivated to get it done, in fact enjoying a movie in it here and there kin'da get's me going again cause I wanna get to that point of seeing everything that it can be.

I'm gonna watch movies anyhow so why not on the big screen if I can, also my kids can have friends over to chill out and enjoy it to.

The added mini riser has been working out great. I wasn't sure till after I got the seats if I was gonna need it or not and it was close but it has paid off doing it. It's not at all ackward either sitting into the chairs perfectly natural.

Been working on the screen today, got it up in fact with the help of my youngest. Daddy's girl but she aint no joke she's one tough cookie and hung in there the entire time I was splinning in the screen material, probably couldn't get it done without her. Best $5.00 I've spent in the whole project . I'll Post some pics tomorrow.

Thanks CJ,

The results are in, and while there is one thing I would have changed (more on that later) I am extremely pleased with the screen, as is the Mrs. and my buddy who came over last night to see Iron Man. He was holding out to get the whole experience in the HT .

Started off by painting the inside and backside of the frame so their wouldn't be any reflections.


Then I used these corner braces to help shore up the corners of the border. I figured it would also be a good way to secure the side border pieces after they were wrapped instead of making it permanent with liquid nails and trim nails, especially since this area has no curve.




After this I started to secure the screen track pieces to the horizontal pieces of the border. No need to staple them as I thought I might need to do. They held just fine when splining the screen.





Then it was time to wrap it with velvet. What I would have done differently is to have wrapped the velvet before securing the screen track like I did with the vetical pieces. Unfortunately with the bottom piece of the screen if you go up to it you can see some staples and areas where the velvet was trimmed. Would've been a non issue if it was wrapped first and I then secured the track. I'll hopefully should be able to solve this with a thin velvet wrapped filler piece.



The vertical pieces i did while off the frame, then put in place for fit and finish.


The bottom was wrapped and the vertical pieces were secured with the corner braces. This is the point I got to on Sunday night.



Monday after running a few errands I was able to get to the good part. I bought the 63" material vs. the 98" but I tried to angle the fabric as much as I could. No biggie as my projector is only 720P but I thougt I would try in case I ever go 1080P. My original idea was to spline the first outermost row of the track and then spline the second row to make the screen tight, but I really didn't need to as the screen was very tight in most areas and only needed to respline a couple of areas. Splinnig the second row wouldn't have helped the problem areas.
Front of the screen


Back of the screen mostly trimmed off except the top. There's a couple of waves you can see on the left, this is mostly because there is no supports in the middle and the material splinned naturally pulls down on the frame. This is a non issue though when the screen is mounted. The space the screen goes into is about 1/8-1/4" bigger than the frame, I'm using mini clamps to secure the screen, this helps the frame to be pulled nice and taught removing any waves.


Now with the screen put in place, room was dark but flash was lighting it up:





No flash:




Watched Iron Man (again) with my friend zoomed out to fill most of the screen. The picture looked great, no complaints at all with the material, I gotta rebuild my lens to get the full effect.

Thanks, second time watching since it came out on DVD still love it. Lot of great scenes which get the subwoofer going.

Thanks. The soffit, upper section of the false wall is open in the back just stuffed with insulation. I have OSB screwed there which follows the same radius of the small half wall then sheetrock foward of that. The screen was simply placed on the lower section leaving a small gap above. Right now I have a couple of 1X3 pieces filling some of that gap until I do something more permanent. With the 1X3's in place though it leaves about 1/4" gap. Then I use a set of these mini clamps to secure the frame from above first, pulling up the frame with the long part going up. Then another set to pull the frame down, batta boom-batta bing screen is in place. Very easily removeable if need be.

I went with 110" <----> wide screen, or 119.5" diag. screen, rounded up 120" . My first row of seats are right at about 10', a little more when reclined. My second row is 16'. I have very good vision and just about can make out the holes in the screen material from the 1st row but not bad. With an image up it looks great. My projector zoomed out that much though was putting it to the test. When the lens is in place I shouldn't need to zoom at all so it should make for a sharper picture.

Watching Iron Man last night on it felt great, wasn't like I had to pan my head or anything, just totally engulfed in the movie. My daughter and friend were also pleased, we were all in the front row. Need to check it out from the back row for visual effect.

What really detemined the screen size was a couple of things. First anything bigger than a 100" 16:9 image my wife felt was a little to overwhelming and didn't like it. So this way the 16:9 image is roughly 90". Secondly 90" was the smallest image I could get from my projector at the distance it is placed at which is in the soffit over second row seating.

So to sum it all up, I felt perfectly comfy in the 1st row. Should be even better in the second row and the Mrs. shouldn't have a problem because she prefers the loveseat back there.

I guess I didn't really answer this question. I would only go bigger if my room were also deeper 21-22' besides being wider. As it is now I think I'm at the envelopes edge but that's a good place to be...