Transportation of racks and boards

[cmalloy513]

I'm looking for a way to speed up the set up and break down of my show for this year. The break down mostly. What are some ways that some of you make the transportation of your racks and boards quicker and lighter. I have 20 10 shot consumer sized racks and I usually have around 10 cases of cakes. Usually 3 cases of 200g cakes and 7-9 cases of 500g cakes. Let me know your ideas. Thanks

[Capt.Rob73]

I use hot glue to attach cakes to pieces of OSB, the hot glue really holds them in place well. I put some under the cake, then around the edges. After the show, I turn the boards sideways and knock the cakes free.

[displayfireworks1]

How far are you transporting the items and do you use a firing system? Are you able to dispose of items at the shoot site?

[Kenny East]

I use eye bolts on the ends of my racks, stake them down and together... Two racks share one stake/rebar post... The cakes i use i pack in boxes...fuse out one side and cover with foil... Then a thin sheet of plywood.... Remove the plywood top sheet at the site and place the igniter... Search cake boxes on YouTube for a video of some of my boxes

[MontanaMike]

One "speed" tip I can offer (which we didn't do last year, but will this year) is to bunch-up all the ignitor wires at each module and cut all of them off at once using a pair of tin snips, rather than removing all the wires from the modules one-by-one in the field. You can then remove the wire ends from the modules at your leisure in your shady garage or workshop.

We don't glue 500g cakes down, but our boards have a rim around the edge so we can set up the cakes such that they fill most of the space, so they can't move around much. The only cakes we don't put on boards are the fountains, since they can more easily ignite their neighbors. We place them well away from everything else.

After the shoot we just throw everything in the back of a pickup truck and head for the dump. Then we come back to the site and pick up the boards/modules/racks. We're lucky that we have a 24-hour dump nearby, and our "crowd" (including our wives) always stays around visiting for a couple hours after the shoot so we don't need to keep anybody else there to watch over our gear.

[joed2323]

Shoot cakes instead

[cmalloy513]

How far are you transporting the items and do you use a firing system? Are you able to dispose of items at the shoot site?

We are transporting them onto a beach which is about a football field's walk from the parking lot. I have a cobra with 2 modules. We have to take everything away from the shoot site right after we are done.

[Kenny East]

If you could pull a trailer out to your shoot site... Just mount your racks and cakes on the trailer... Pull it out, shoot, then pull it away

[Rick_In_Tampa]

For what it's worth.. I usually glue down my cakes to plywood boards that I attached to a frame made with 1"x2"x8' wood boards. I'll try to attach a pic so you can see what I'm talking about. They're strong and light enough that two people can carry them without much effort.
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2097

This year I plan on putting the cakes in garbage bags and then taping and staking them together. That should save a ton of gluing time and I can build the show in place on the 4th. Sort of like this:
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2098