Lovely stuff CvdC ...better and better with more views .
Hello Les Happy new Year.
And Chris S ..this is so true :
Many of us forget the problems facing the beginner. Firstly they probably have few tools, no dedicated workshop, and limited finance. I remember my first lazy tongs had to be made in my bedroom, with little more than a small hacksaw, screwdriver and pliers.
A bit like a smell sparking off an old forgotten memory ..those words took me back almost forty years to putting my first booth together aged about ten or eleven .
It took a good couple of months ... I had never seen inside a real Puppet Theatre and only had the drawing in Peter Frasers book in the local Library to go on.
This design doesnt use lazy tongs , but rather wing-nuts and bolts and cross bracing. ( although this booth takes a bit longer to put up ...it is a much simpler build than lazy tongs for either an older child , or an adult not good with tools )
But its not the method your words reminded me of ...it was the cost of buying the parts on only pocket money.
I remember buying just a couple of strips of wood at a time ,from a shop in the high street that sold a mix of hand tools , some ironmongery , Airfix and other modelling supplies - and also had a limited supply of cut lengths of timber ( similar I guess to the Richard Burridge mouldings and beadings of today ).
One length of this stripwood would furnish me with two of the booths cross bracing struts.
And if I was lucky I could afford maybe two lengths of timber a week - or just one if I also had to to go to the proper Ironmongers and buy a couple of bolts and wing-nuts ( then sold separately out of thick brown cardboard boxes..in the days before DIY superstores ).
It was the 'hacksaw' part of what you wrote that triggered the memory ...the whole booth was done with a junior hacksaw. And as I could only do so much at one time because of cost , each wooden part was very carefully cut , holes drilled with a hand turned drill, corners rounded and then sanded ...a lot !
..there was little else to do until next weeks supply of wood , so things got sanded really , really well .
The whole booth was built quite literally from the ground up.
A glut of Christmas money saw me and Mum go to Debenhams in Canterbury and hit the fabric department in the Sales for some red corduroy for the back and sides , and a single piece of fancy brocaid fabric for the front panel .
Debenhams sold to the quarter yard ..so I got only just enough to be able to turn a hem on the front bit ..as the material was very expensive. ( it is also why I aways use a woven brocaid fabric for Punches Waistcoat ..a little nod back to the look of my first booth)
I think that is why , even now I get such a thrill out of fabric shopping ..and why I waxed lyrical in the thread "In Praise of the Midlands" ....it is still a joy as an adult not only to be able to afford to buy decent fabrics ..but also to be confronted with such a wide choice ..and at such good prices ( needless to say Debenhams in the early 1970s was expensive for fabrics ...but there was nowhere else to go then )
My Dad knew a signwriter that worked in the Amusement Arcade trade, and commissioned him to make and paint my proscenium.
I loved it ! Christmas and Birthday present combined I think ?
My only regret was that the bloke used hardboard instead of ply.
Hardboard being of pressed and glued fibre and sawdust has no inherent strength and is only one step up from Cardboard in my opinion ( then and now ) ...Still I loved my Proscenium .
And that theatre did me for many years right up until my early twenties. The top part of that Proscenium is hanging up in my workshop today.
Here I am with it aged 14 I think ? ..its the pic in the pic , as I have no other record of it.

There was no internet back then of course ( how I remember the envy I felt when a schoolmates Dad got an electric typewriter ! ..wow !!)
So without "Punch and Judy on the Web" there was no way of finding out the more 'usual' method for a booths construction - and no way of asking advice from working Punch and Judy men.
So I start 2013 with two "Thank-Yous" ..each to a Chris....
Thanks again CvdC for sharing your expanded Plans ...
And an even bigger "Thank You" to Chris Sommerville for hosting and maintaining such a wonderful Free resource on the Net , which is so invaluable for makers new and experienced.
Richard