Vent Fabrication

The ducts running along the ceiling are not only cosmetic, but functional as well. They house the real heating and air conditioning ducts for the theater, so the vents, or registers, for these ducts also had to be functional. They are based on vents in Arronaux and Ned's cabins modified to work with an off-the-shelf HVAC register.

The baseplates for the vents were cut from the same 24" diamter heavy cardboard tubes that I used for the ducts and the rectangular body built up from 3/4" MDF. Once assembled the center of the cardboard base was cut out to allow for air flow and cast resin rivet heads were glued in place.

The installed vents were fit with functional registers. Rivets were glued in place over the mounting screws in the corners. If you look closely you'll see that the screws used to mount the register are slotted, which is appropriate to the period. these turned out to be rather difficult to find as most hardware stores only carry the Phillips head type!