FRANKENBERRY-TEAGUE
STAGE WEATHER CO.
PRICE LIST & ORDER FORM · FALL 1987
HUTCHINSON, KANSAS 67501 · TEL. (316) 665-4472
SNOW · RAIN · WIND · THUNDER · LOW FOG
ORDERS FOR DECEMBER DELIVERY CLOSE FRIDAY, 20 NOVEMBER.
MR. or MRS. DIRECTOR: the figures below are per pound and per unit, F.O.B. Hutchinson, and every one of them is good through 31 January 1988. Where I say I measured a thing, I measured it here in the warehouse with a stopwatch and a hundred-foot tape and I will stand behind the number. Where I am quoting a manufacturer's sheet I say so, and where I do not believe the manufacturer's sheet I say that too. Fill in the quantity boxes, pick your freight zone, and the sheet will total itself; there is no charge for figuring it and no salesman will telephone you.
1. SNOW — FALLING FLAKE, SOLD BY THE POUND
Terminal velocity is what sells a flake. A flake that comes down faster than about 1.4 feet per second reads as confetti from row K no matter what shape you cut it, and I have sat in row K of the Convention Hall here and watched it happen. Bulk density is the other half of the arithmetic, because coverage per pound is meaningless without it — a competitor's book this year quotes "600 square feet per pound" for a flake and does not print a density anywhere in ninety-six pages, which is not a figure, it is a decoration. My densities below are weighed in a one-cubic-foot box, three fills, averaged.
| CODE | ITEM | PRICE | QTY | AMOUNT |
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COVERAGE CALCULATOR — FIGURE YOUR POUNDS BEFORE YOU ORDER
Density on a school hall stage: 1.5 flakes per square foot per second is a light fall you can see from the back; 3 is a good storm; anything above 6 is a blizzard and your actors cannot be heard over the sweeping afterwards. The pound figure is honest — it comes off the flake's own weight per flake and its own fall rate, and it does not know or care what the flake costs. The cheap flake is very often the expensive order.
2. RAIN — RIGS, HEADS, PUMPS, TROUGHS
A rain rig is a pipe with holes in it, a pump, and a trough to catch what comes down; the trough is not the optional part. Every December, without fail, I get telephone calls from theatres who bought the pipe and the pump and skipped the catch trough, and there is nothing I can do for them on the fourteenth of the month except tell them what I am telling you now in October. Order the trough. Most rigs sold in this country have never had water through them once, which is the cheapest way to own one but not the reason to buy it.
| CODE | ITEM | PRICE | QTY | AMOUNT |
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3. WIND, THUNDER, LOW FOG
The wind machine is a slatted drum turned against a tensioned canvas apron. Drum speed sets the pitch and canvas tension sets the volume, and those two adjustments are independent, so a crank hand can hold a pitch and swell it, which is the only reason to use a drum instead of a loudspeaker. Thunder sheet must hang free at one edge — clamped at two edges it clangs like a shop door and will not rumble. Dry-ice fog sits low because it is cold; on a raked deck it runs downhill, off the apron, and pools in the pit, so figure eight to twelve minutes of dwell before it is where you want it and put a fan on the upstage side if your rake is over one in twenty-four.
| CODE | ITEM | PRICE | QTY | AMOUNT |
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THE NEW CRADLE HANGER (SC-3H)
The hanger is new this year and it is worth the three dollars. The old yoke bolted the trough rigid to the batten, so the shake had to come out of the operator's wrists and the rhythm went to pieces after ninety seconds; the new hanger carries the trough on two hardened pins with a half-inch of free swing fore and aft. The trough now returns itself, so the crank hand is only feeding the swing rather than making it, and a steady two-per-second shake holds for the length of a scene. That is the whole of the improvement and it is entirely mechanical.
SUBSTITUTIONS — READ BEFORE ORDERING
The mill that cuts our SF-2 paper flake is down for retooling until the second week of January and I will not promise what I cannot ship. The following substitutions are automatic on this form and are made at the substitute's price and weight, not at the backordered price:
- SF-2 paper flake, 1½ in. — backordered to January. Substituted with SF-4, 1¼ in. paper flake, pound for pound. Reads slightly finer from row K; light it from the side either way.
- RH-9 brass rain head, 24-hole — backordered to January. Substituted with RH-7 stainless head, 18-hole. Fewer holes, wider spray, same trough.
- WM-1 wind drum, 30 in. hardwood slat — backordered to January. Substituted with WM-2, 36 in. Heavier crate; check your zone before you swear at the freight line.
There is no way to hold a backordered item on this form and I would rather you were annoyed with me in October than in December.
4. SHIPPING & CRATING
Freight is charged on dimensional weight or actual weight, whichever is greater, at 194 cubic inches to the pound. Snow flake is bulk with almost nothing in it, so forty pounds of flake in its crate bills like a hundred and ten; forty pounds of pump housing bills like forty. That is not our rule and I cannot waive it. Crates ship whole. An eleven-pound order of flake goes in the same 25-lb crate as a twenty-five-pound order and costs the same to freight, so if you are near a crate line, fill the crate.
| ZONE | FROM HUTCHINSON | FIRST 20 LB | EA. ADD'L LB | MIN. |
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Kansas deliveries add 4% state tax on merchandise only, not on freight. Minimum order $35.00 merchandise. No C.O.D. after 1 December.
ORDER FORM — FORM SN-12, REV. 4
Enter quantities in the boxes above. This portion figures itself; check it against your own arithmetic before you sign, because I check mine.
Terms net 30 to established school and church accounts; all others prepaid. Warehouse open 7:30 to 4:00, Monday through Friday, and Saturday mornings in November. Will-call welcome — we are the long grey building with the loading dock on the alley side, second stop past Sunn's Prehistoric Gardens if you are coming up the highway.