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Staging is whatever you make it be.  During Glissando's restoration, I satisfied my need for staging with some rather rickety stuff that got the job done, but was certainly nothing to emulate.  I love working off staging, and wanted to construct some that I could use for many years, in many different projects and situations.  So I decided to basically build from the ground up.

Glissando's Old Project Staging
(Circa Summer 2000)

Keeping these parameters in mind, I left the shop and crossed the yard to my scrap heap, where I spent several minutes picking through and choosing over 20 2x4s for the project.  Building seven 4' tall horses would require plenty of lumber, plus all the pieces still contained various screws, angle-cut ends, and other imperfections that limited how much usable material I could get out of any given board.  In a number of trips, I carried my chosen boards back to the shop, where I dumped them in a heap overnight to allow the ice, snow, and frozen leaves to thaw before continuing.  Before quitting for the evening, I planned out my design and did some preliminary milling on the 2x10s and other boards that were dry and clean, leaving the largest pile of wet, nasty boards until the morning.

First thing the next morning, I headed to the lumber yard to pick up some new staging planks.  Although I had a number of staging planks already lying around, most of them were either too short or too scary for any sort of consistent use; most of them I had built some years earlier (for Glissando) out of plywood scraps and 2x4s, and they had definitely passed their useful life.  So I got enough 10'  2x10s to build six staging planks (three needed on each side), each incorporating a doubled thickness for added stiffness and strength.

Back at the shop, I got busy building the seven horses I needed.  This was a big, time-consuming job, since there were many cuts required on the raw pieces before I could even begin assembly.  And then assembly took a long time, too.  It took me the better part of the day, all told, to get my staging completely built and erected.  For details, read on.

Next, I cut 28 legs for the horses.  Each leg was 48" in length, with a  angle cut at both ends for flush fits on the floor and at the top edge of the horses.  Using one set, I built a quick prototype horse so that I could measure for the remaining cross pieces.  Directly off the prototype, I determined the length needed for two side pieces, as well as two parallel cross braces located 2' below the top (for stiffness and as an additional level on which to support staging).  I also measured for some supports directly beneath the top.  With all the measurements, I set up to do plenty of cutting, mass-producing the pieces needed.  Each piece required a variety of angle cuts, all 15° to match the leg angle.  As  you continue reading the assembly process, you'll see how each piece is shaped.

With all the pieces cut and milled as necessary (each of the seven horses required four legs, two side cross members, two lengthwise cross members, and two top supports), I could begin the assembly process.

The first step in assembly was to install the legs to the top.  I clamped a top piece to my bench, upside down, and screwed the legs to the top, predrilling first to prevent splitting the dry old wood.  I found that clamping in this manner made it easy to align the tops of the legs with the top piece.  I used 2-1/2" coarse thread drywall screws; I buy these things in 25# containers.  I love them for all sorts of utilitarian tasks (like building benches, shop accessories--and staging).

Then I measured 24" from the top down each leg, and installed longitudinal cross members there on each side.  During the milling process, I had cut a 15° bevel on one edge, so that the top edge (where one might step, or place a staging plank) ended up parallel with the floor and top of the horse.

Finally, I installed two short support pieces across the tops of the insides of the legs, directly beneath and perpendicular to the top.  These pieces add critical support to the weight-bearing top.

Each horse took a minimum of 20 minutes to assemble, and used 44, 2-1/2" screws to secure the 11 pieces of wood together.  I timed how long it took to build the 5th horse in the series, so I'm sure the earlier ones took a bit longer.  This assembly time does not, of course, include the cutting and milling operations.  So in this manner the day disappeared.

In keeping with my new "even more documentation online" mantra, I present the following series of photos of the finished product.