Dear Constant Reader,
For several years now I’ve been using a silhouette screen in some of my acts. It’s one of those lattice-work rice paper tri-fold screens you can easily get in a college town like Boston. But it’s far from perfect. The panels are a little narrow. The screen is a little short. The paper is delicate. It doesn’t travel well. Sight lines are often an issue. I’ve been dreaming of a custom-built screen for a long time.
At last, it’s time for Super Screen.
We started with a sheet of nice plywood, 1/2″ thick, that the lovely folks at the Home Depot cut down to 6′ by 3′. It’s not light. Carrying it down the basement stairs to the workshop by myself proved impossible.
First step, Scratch drew the outer frame. We’re going to use the wood in the middle for the side pieces (wings). Waste not, want not!
Then he drew the lines for the wing frames. We’ve been using a T-square that is conveniently the same width as the frame.
The top of the screen is going to be curved. The T-square is useless for that, so Scratch made a compass out of a piece of scrap wood.
Voila! Curves!
Once everything is drawn, it’s time for the scary part — cutting. That’s when we realized that despite careful preparations, we needed some new saw blades. It’s not a project until you have to run out to the Home Depot in the middle!
With fresh blades in the jigsaw (a vintage one Scratch inherited from his grandfather), the cutting began.
Look! A curve! 
This is where I stopped taking pictures because things began to go awry. A clever plan designed to make our lives easier did not. And then… you know the saying “measure twice, cut once”*? Well, it has a corollary: “measure once, curse twice”. Let’s just say that despite a lot of measuring, there was a lot of cursing and there will need to be a trip back to the Home Depot for some more plywood.
However, the main frame of the screen is done!
More to come…
Oh, The Glamourous Life! 
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