Lighting Stand Cart

[David Raehn]

I partner with a lighting guy for a lot of youth events in my area. He uses a lot of tripod stands for his lighting setup. After nearly seven years of carrying all of his stands in canvas stand bags, I built him a cart. This started with a retired hospital laundry cart, some pine 1x4 and some good-old PL. All in all, this reduces the load-in / load-out by at least eight round trips to the trailer.

[David Raehn]

Here's another couple pictures. There are 27 triangular slots for the tripod stands. The extra vertical spaces are handy for cross tubes and tees.

[Bruce Weldy]

Excellent!

[NukePooch]

Excellent!

I agree. That's awesome! I need to do something similar for mic stands...
I gotta say though...that's a whole lotta tripods! What would you call that many? A troop of tripods? Maybe a forest of tripods?

[David Raehn]

I'm getting ready to do a mic stand addition to my main gear cart. I forget where the thread went (can't seem to find it) that I did some time ago about my 'everything' cart. I'll repost when the modifications are done. I usually carry at least 8 mic stands. I need to get a couple more shorty desk-top stands. They really are handy for putting the '57s in front of guitar amps....

This lighting stand cart was a real joy to make: We were going back and forth about dimensions for a couple weeks when low-and-behold, I ended up at the ER with my youngest (who had just that evening done his first FOH gig (at 10 years old)). I saw the laundry bin and thought "that's perfect". I remembered that the Goodwill stores use these quite a bit. After wheeling and sealing at the Goodwill, I brought home a pair of them for $150.

The math for the woodwork ended up being dirt simple, I can show anyone who may be interested. The two frames involved used up exactly 10 eight foot 1x4s in total and took about 3 hours to cut and assemble. The cart was not modified at all.