My new DIY screen, complete!! (1 Viewer)

[Neil Joseph]

I finally finished my DIY screen. It is a 96” diagonal, 16x9 screen with 2.5” bordering all around. The screen material is somewhat similar in colour to what is used on the Stewart Firehawk with a gain >1.0 and

 

[Neil Joseph]

Here are some photos. Sorry about the PQ of the screenshot. I lost some photography equipment but will get a better shot as soon as I can.

The Paints
Screen Closeup
Screen
Screen Shot

 

[Mike Strassburg]

Looks very nice. I hope to be building one in a few years when we build a new home with a dedicated HT.

 

[Chris Tsutsui]

From a distance, that "room" shot looks straight out of a Home theater magazine. Clean, Modern, sophisticated look.

You make me want to build a screen for my room even though I don't even have a projector. It'll make myself and others think I have a nice HT when I really just have a computer with speakers hooked up.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Dustin B]

Thanks Niel. I'll be looking for that Tremco paint. I'm planning on a PT-L300U sometime this summer and your paint testing just saved me a lot of time and money.

Only things left in my research are to figure out where I'm going to get shielded Cat5e to make the 25' VGA cable. Where I'm going to get the Xcapture card and IRMan. And lastly if the aspect ratio control provided by TheaterTek and/or YxY will allow me to pull off a constant area screen the way I want to (with only 3way masking and at the cost of a little panel resolution on material that isn't 2.35:1).

Oh, PS, looks great

 

[Jon_B]

Excellent job. How heavy is the screen and how do you have it mounted to the wall?

Jon

 

[Neil Joseph]

The screen is 25 pounds heavy. Since the border is securing the actual screen surface, all I had to do was screw the borders into the studposts using 2" phillips flathead screws and those little circular things that aflt head screws fit into that look like a small doughnut (forgot the name).

 

[Javier_Huerta]

I love what you did! It looks terrific.

I was wondering, though. The enamel you used... doesn't it have metallic specks in it? It's the aluminum one, so it should, or is it some shade of gray?

 

[Neil Joseph]

It is not a shade of gray really but more metallic looking. There were other types of aluminium paint but the others I tried all had higher degrees of sheen to the surface making the screen shiny and thus reflecting more light including ambient light. I had taken a close look at the Firehawk samples before beginning my search for suitable paints. I was not able to find any combination of "regular" paints to do this job. The final screen paint would have to include a metallic paint as part of the solution.

 

[Javier_Huerta]

I remember the days I used to build little plastic models, and using the enamel aluminum paint. That gave me an idea...

I could never find a sufficiently matte enamel to paint the exhaust ports of the jets I built. So what I used to do was paint them with the aluminum spray paint, add some "exhaust gas" with light applications of flat black paint, and then covered the entire piece with one or two coats of flat lacquer paint.

I don't know how much of a difference it would make (the extra matte coat), but I think I'll try when I make my own screen.

Thanks a lot for the ideas!

Javier.