My DIY Phifer SheerWeave + Aluminum Frame

I just posted this in the 2.35 forum in camarillo_cinema thread on his aluminum frame, thought I'd post it here in it's own thread, any questions just ask...

I used 1-1/2" Square Aluminum Tubing for my frame, purchased from my local http://www.metalsupermarkets.com.

The cost of my 92"x39" 2.35 frame was $89.00 Cdn after taxes... The store cut my 4 pieces then we both realized that I didn't actually need 39" lengths for my height because I didn't take into consideration the 1-1/2" from the widths so we cut those down to 36" lengths... I'm guessing I could of saved a couple of bucks but we got a laugh out of it anyway.

Metal Supermarket had given me the name of a local aluminum number who I had priced out earlier. He charged me an hour’s labor, so $65 and I paid cash.

I picked up my Phifer Sheerweave 4500 from a local supplier in town for $149.00.

I used an sos pad on the frame to rough it up for some primer, primed it, then painted flat black, the two cans of paint were about $8.00 from Canadian Tire.

I then used velcro to attach my screen to the frame, velcro was $40.00 after taxes. I bought 2" loop velcro and had it sewn into the material and then used 1" adhesive velcro on the frame, I wanted the material to have a thicker velcro so I had some overlap with the hook side so I could pull it tight and not worry about not getting good coverage.

All said and done, approximately $350.00 CDN for my frame and I think it looks great. I decided against cross braces to cut down on cost for one and for another did not think they were necessary for only a 92" screen, my screen is rock solid with no bend or bow present, I still have some work to do as you can see by the pictures, I have the screen sitting on a couple of saw horses until I get a chance to build my false wall in its place.

!!!!!Updated Picture!!!!!
Can't imagine the screen wall changing much from this, so I will keep this one up top

!!!!!Updated Picture!!!!!

Front Side


Back Side


Side Side ?


Close up of Corner


In Action!


More In Action!

Ya the power buy fell through, there seems to be some aprehension on the retailers to sell the raw material... at least that is what I have found. I got the name of a local Wholesaler who wouldn't deal with me because I was the end consumer. He gave me a couple of local retailers to try and it took a number of phone calls and some convincing to get them to sell me a piece, in the end I just don't think it is worth the trouble for them, they want to sell me window coverings for my whole house, not just a chunk of material.

There is some serious mark-up on this stuff though, so it shocks me that they weren't more eager to sell, I paid just about double what the wholesaler could of sold it to me for (If I'd commit to a whole roll that was). I'd pass the retailers number on, but they pretty much told me they weren't interested in selling it this way again. If I were you, I'd check with some local Window Covering places, or email Phifer directly for some wholesalers/retailers in your area.

In that power buy thread Reuben said he had lots of Phifer material for sale that he was experiementing with and would let it go for a steal of price, not sure if anyone followed up with him or not, with him being in the states it was not of a lot of use for me to track him down with shipping and everything, but maybe you should drop him a line, much closer to you.

The Seymour material, IS, Sheerweave 4500, they say as much right on their page.

I'm surprised your searches came up dry, there was loads of discussions (Starting around little over a year ago or so I think) when Reuben from the forums here went on a quest of sorts to find the best AT material money could buy. His search lead him to experimenting with the Sheerweave product lines, and in the end creating his own company using the fabric from his findings, smxscreens, truely an amazing product and at a price that beats and a performance the calims to to be the best AT product out there.

Reuben offered his material for sale to the DIYer for a long time, then pulled it from sale and then now I still think has offered it for a limited time for sale, people have done comparisons between the smx material and sheerweave 4500 in chalk and have found them to be similar, not identical, but real, real close. The Seymour site has comparisons on it actually. I would of liked nothing more then to buy one of Reuben's frames, but his pricing, I thought, was still outside what I wanted to spend... in the end, I spent more then I thought I would and I'm still not done yet I probably could of spent marginally more and gotten Reuben's superior product... but hey, I had fun doing all the running around and trying to save money

I'm working on finishing up the whole wall, when I get that done I'll update the thread. In comparison to the Black Out Cloth I had up, I'd say the two pictures were very, very close, I throw my black out cloth overtop of my new screen and I can hardly tell a difference, not sure what that means, because I did not think BOC had any gain and the reports I've read on others sites is that the Phifer did have a positive gain to it... so if anything I was expecting maybe a little bright picture, regardless I do think it looks great, just looking forward to getting it up in it's permanant home!

I agree you should do some tilt... especially if you are using this material with a 1080p projector... but for 720p, I have no problem with not tilt and using the width of the screen as my height as well... I got some off the large roll, which is 98" or so I believe and I am using that as my the width of my screen with no tilt and I see no moire, so I'm totally breaking the rules

I thought it was worth mentioning that the original intent of this thread was not as a "power buy" thread for the sheerweave product That has already been tried and when it was tried I thought the AVS mod's had said that it was going to be a one time thing...

Anyway, any further work on a power buy should be brought up with the mods I think

A small update, finally got around to building my screen wall. It is a offical, a carpenter, I am not! Still, it will do the trick, just need some spare time to make a run to Ottawa Street in Hamilton to pick up my black velvet and I will have the screen wall finished up, maybe this weekend?



To do:
New Carpet
Paint Ceiling - Flat Black
Paint Walls - Dark Brown
Stain DVD Shelf - Dark Brown
Replace baseboard and stain to match shelf
Replace light fixture
Ceiling Mount projector

Slowly but surely

Thanks Scott,

The room is a 4th bedroom in our basement, it was finished when we moved in so I have kind of 'shoe horned' my theatre into it. Originally I wanted to tear a closet out that is on the opposite wall from the screen, it would of allowed me to go with a 10ft screen rather then an 8ft screen... but for resale purposes we left the closet there and the room will easily conver back to a bedroom... with some pretty solid book shelves too

Hope to be making a material purchase this weekend, will update if I do!

Well $48 in Black Velvet (4.25 meters) later and I have a covered wall, very pleased with how it turned out, but holy smokes, what a lot of work... I tell ya one thing, thank goodness for stretch velvet, a life saver being able to stretch it.

Bad news is, is that my Panasonic AX100U decided to crap out on me, I knew I was buying a projector with some reliability problems, but I was hoping to get lucky... alas, it won't stay on for more then 5 minutes, back the store it goes.

When I get it back and get the screen tidied up I will post some more pics.

williamhorton;

My screen is the Sheerweave 4500 in chalk, I'm really pleased with it, looks even better with the Black Velvet boarder/wall now, I have to get my black backing up, I just finished securing the false wall to the rest of the wall this evening... I've also tried all evening to get my projector to stay on more then 5 minutes so I could watch Transformers on HD DVD... grrr... no luck! Have to make that call tomorrow, what a circus it is going to be returning it across the border for service.

Will, the details are in this post I'm pretty sure, but whatever, not like I have a projector to watch or anything

I'm using a diy lense and letting the panny do the scaling for me... it is actually one of the big reasons I went with this projector because it does the required stretch with HD content... Removed bit in here because I was mistaken on the abilities of the Optoma HD70... don't want people to only read this post and think it can't do the stretch, as noted below, it does indeed do it!

The material you are looking for is a Phifer SheerWeave 4500 in the colour Chalk. They make it in different colours and the one people have found to be the most like other commerical offerings is the chalk.

My projector is running all default settings, I have not calibrated yet... I switched between automatic iris being on and off and never really saw a difference, same with the harmonizer.

I'm feeding it a Toshiba A20, I've been playing around with it, sending it 720p, 1080i, 1080p and recently 1080p/24fps to see what I like the best... probably settle on 1080p/24fps just because I can

With the recent price drop I will be adding the ps3 to the mix in November and I also have a hd dish.

I thought I had read that it only stretched SD DVD's at 480p and wouldn't stretch them up converted... can you play your upconverted SD DVD's stretched?