Willow Bend Puppet Theater
By Eric Souders
Eric has been a fan of Hot Wire Foam Factory for some time, working with the tools on some awesome model railroad layouts. He has a background in theater set design, so when Willow Bend Environmental Education Center came to him to build a puppet theater for a local grant-supported art festival, he came up with a perfect concept.
“Before the logging days of the late 1800s there were Ponderosa pines of 5′ in diameter here as reported by Lt Edward F Beale when he came through surveying the 35th parallel with 22 camels in 1857. The staff at Willow Bend Environmental Education Center, of which I am a board member, were applying for a grant to participate in a local art festival and came to me about building a puppet theater.”
Eric started the project by cutting sections with the Industrial Hot Knife.
“It occurred to me that a 5′ diameter tree trunk would be ideal for a proscenium.”
He used a combination of the Freehand Router and 6-Inch Hot Knife to carve slots for the panels to attach to the wooden ribs.
“Three performances included telling the life story of a forest tree, the story of a butterfly metamorphosis and the story of the Three Sisters, the Native American story of Beans, Squash and Corn. More stories will be told in the future through our puppetry.
My model railroad experience gave me the confidence to build such a tree.”
With the panels attached to the lightweight frame, he used the Industrial Hot Knife with Sled Guide to create a detailed bark texture.
To finish it off, he coated it with All Purpose Foam Coat and painted it. Eric designed the tree trunk so that it can be dismantled into three sections for easy transport. The Foam Coat texture is strong enough, and when the theater is set up the seams are invisible, giving the trunk a realistic look.
“I painted on about 4 thin coats of the All Purpose foam coat. It worked really well in preserving the texture and creating a hard surface to paint.”
