Tuesday, December 04, 2018
7 Ways To Screw-up Your Flame Retarding
Guild of Scenic Artists: A Scenic Artist’s main job is to “execute the designer’s ideas and concepts of a show using a myriad of techniques like painting, carving and texture work.” However, we also have a second job – making the scenery safe in case of fires. This extra task often falls onto our shoulders because we are the last stop for a scenic element before it gets loaded into the space. We also want to make sure that whatever fire-resistant treatments also don’t ruin our hard work.
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It is interesting, I was not aware that it was also the job of the scenic artist to fire retard the sets, although it does make sense. I was also surprised to find out that there is no standard for fire retarding. There is so much material chemical research that goes into that position that I was not aware of. The existence of places which sell specifically fire retardants based on the use within scenery, is extremely helpful. The thought process behind keeping extra fabric on an object for checking flame retardancy is a good practice of constant extra steps and thinking ahead, which is so important to the theatrical world. I wonder whether speakers are also made to be flame retardant. It must be such a struggle when looking to use an effect, and making sure it is able to be treated without ruining the desired effect.
Safe scenery is good scenery. I feel that fire retardant is often time the first to go during crunch time. But the fact that there are no real rules that outline what is considered safe it is often easy to overlook this part of the process. Here at Carnegie Mellon, I have never seen fire retardant as a budgeted item, and I have personally never applied it on scenery. I think one of the major takeaways from this article is we need to come up with a process that integrates safety as a factor in the build process. If we don’t explicitly chart out time in the budget what will sever as a reminder as the project unfold? I would be curious to see how other scene shops around the country account for safety in their process and who in the process is responsible.
I found every bullet point in the article very relatable and useful. Especially the first one and the last one made me flinch. As the article say, flameproofing may be a common term but not the correct one. We can only add a layer of resistance to the surface of a highly combustible material, and therefore flame retardant is the correct term. And this is why the correct kind of flame retardant material needs to be used and skimping on the flame retardant product won’t make a thick enough layer for the product to be resistant to fire. I found the last bulletpoint—save the samples so that you can test them with the fire marshal—to be very practical and useful. Reading this article the only counter argument I could come up with was the budget. If we could FR everything onstage with thick layer of FR products, that would be awesome but that would cost us a lot of money. So I wonder what are the common rules that theaters apply on which products to FR.
As I am working on a show that is mostly made of plastic, this article was of interest to me. In its advice on the subject, the article suggests that flame testing "includes the testing of products, sample time creating the desired effect, and finally the approved final implementation. Many times choosing a more expensive product that already passes fire rating tests will be cheaper in the long run (think of a rubber versus natural mulch scenario) because you save on both labor and material costs of the fire-resistant product." We are going with a FR plastic that in theory won't have to be treated by us additionally. We are hoping to do a flame test next week as well to just make sure/test to see what we are really looking at with this material. I appreciated the clarification that FR does not mean flameproof and that "We can’t actually flameproof anything that is considered to be combustible. What we can do is add a layer of resistance to the substrate that gives your performers, crew, and audience time to get out of the building in case a fire does happen." FR is the best case scenario with plastic, but it isn't flameproof, it will just take longer to burn/melt.
Treateing Scenery for resistance to fire is a very important step to the scenic fabrication process. So Important, in fact, that oftentimes it becomes a defining factor in how we do a technical design for any particular scenic element. Flame Retardant salts are very useful, since they can be applied to a variety of very flammable materials. Soaking paper and cardboard in flamex is a very useful tool for flame retarding props, and makes it so one can literally hold a lighter to a piece of paper and watch it go out in a puff. However, in many jurisdictions, some parts of scenery are absolutely required to be "inherently flame-resistant", which means the actual material it is made from is resistant to fire. This usually encompasses synthetic materials such as vinyl, which actually cannot burn with a self-sustaining flame. Some fabrics such as leather are manufactured in such a way as to be inherently flame-retardant as well. It is always an important consideration to make.
Throughout my time at Carnegie Mellon I have seen PTM work on a ton of shows. One of the most important tasks for Carnegie scenic is too make sure that they scenery is safe and flame retarded. This has become a big discussion point recently as AB Machine and Cabaret have used scenic elements that require flame retarding but its been extremely hard finding those materials that are FR. One great thing at CMU is that the each department does help each other out in these situations. An example of that is Todd is always willing to answer questions about how to make it safe since he and the prop shop work on a lot of props that need FR. I think this is a great article to read for first time FR items, however, I think you will also want to do more research as this is extremely important for safety concerns.
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