One of the kids started to assemble the StarStruck fence on a field and I think he followed the instructions properly. He ran into a problem, however, when he was down to the last few steps and discovered that the center rails did not seem long enough to join the fence together in the middle.
His problem, I’m guessing, is that he mounted the fence’s metal base plates slightly too far apart, but if you follow the directions for fence assembly, I don’t think you will notice that mistake until you have assembled almost the entire fence.
I noticed that there are slots in the black metal gussets that join the fence to the perimeter of the field, so there is an opportunity to tweak the dimensions with those slots. But those slots don’t help you with re-positioning the metal base plates after you have nearly assembled the entire fence.
I’m guessing the solution might be to assemble the center section first instead of last, so that you can get the distance between the metal base plates just right. Then, after the other two sections of fence have been joined to the central section, those final fence sections can be joined to the field perimeter by taking advantage of the slots in the black metal gussets. Of course, it would be essential that the base plates are positioned relative to the field perimeter so you don’t get the fence too far to one side or the other, but as the instructions are written right now, I think it’s too easy to fall into the same trap as the kid did today.
Perhaps what might help are just some basic measurements that indicate how far apart the metal base plates and perimeter walls, etc. need to be.
In any case, centering the metal base plates by using the intersection of the 4 tiles doesn’t seem accurate enough to me.
Has anyone else experienced trouble of this sort? Anyone have suggestions on how best to assemble the fence to prevent this from happening?
Yes, we had the same problem just yesterday. The trick would be to justify the black base-plate standoffs to the inner side of the foam tile joint, even if this means the one side isn’t perfectly centered on the center-field line.
When we assembled our field we had a similar problem to what you describe. What you will find is that the walls of the field can bow out in the middle. Each side being bowed out by only 1/2 of an inch will result in the middle bar appearing 1 inch short which was the case in our situation. The walls are easy enough to just push together, but the biggest challenge for us was the field tiles as the middle posts mount in the seams of the tiles. The way that we got our field together was to disconnect the foam tiles between the center 2 posts of the Startstruck wall and pull the posts together so that the center bar could be attached. After connecting the wall, the foam tiles overlapped by about 1 inch or so. We then just forced the tiles back together, which didn’t initial seem possible. The foam compresses a lot and after working with the tiles a bit, eventually sat flat. It may help to remove a row of tiles next two the center 2 rows so that you can get your hands under and really work them to get the fit.
Let me get this right @JasonG Assemble perimeter wall and field wall first and then place foam tiles that would be in the neutral zone once the fence is situated last?
Usually we do foam tiles, then fence, then game objects. Good info!
If starting from nothing @Team80_Giraffes I might take the approach you describe. The center posts mount under the field tiles so I might be inclined to start with the center 2 rows and once those are set, work my way towards the sides. Our field and tiles were mostly together so we just took out the minimum number of tiles necessary to make the adjustments. Everything fits nicely together once all the tiles are compressed and in place. Good luck.
Sounds like your base plates are not in the right position. As was mentioned earlier, you need then to be as far in toward the middle as possible. We have moved our field a couple of times and have just left the fence completely assembled. Once you get the base plates correct, it goes together nicely. We also did the same thing with a field we borrowed for a tournament we hosted.