riggsbm
Sophomore Member
Posts: 177
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Post by riggsbm on Jun 24, 2012 11:00:09 GMT -6
Can anyone share what techniques they use to painting a field? Another coach and I are arguing about the best way to get straight lines. If you are painting a field from scratch, how do you begin? How would you get your perfect corners?
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Post by mahonz on Jun 24, 2012 12:17:30 GMT -6
You can use the Carpenters 3,4,5 method of creating right angles but that takes a lot of math and time. If you rent a transit on a tripod that is the best and most accurate for large scale layouts.
Then set 60P nails in the ground as your monuments so only the nail head shows flush. Don’t sink them below flush so that you can tie a heavy-duty string line to them. Then you don’t have to reset the field every time you paint. Layout takes longer than the actual painting.
One monument at the corner of each end zone and 11 along each sideline spaced every 10 yards. If you want hash marks and the coaches box add in those monuments. Numbers are painted with stencils but need monuments as well.
The nail head monuments set at the corners of each end zone are the center of all field boundary lines so they are part of the field but covered with a pylon during play. All other nail head monuments can be set offset 16 feet or so from the field boundary line so they are behind the bench and are never part of the field of play. All necessary seconday nail head monuments along the back of the endzone can be set offset from the field boundary line 4 feet or so. These would be for stenciling, hash layout, coaches box and the like.
Then tie off heavy-duty string between your monuments and off you go. Most striper machines use string lines to guide them. To get them real tight use a come along twist off technique. Tight means straight. Paint the field boundaries first and the infill stripes last.
A Surveyor can do your initial monument layout for you if you think its too big of a task.
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Post by Chris Clement on Jun 24, 2012 15:15:58 GMT -6
That's pretty much what we did.
A word to the wise: don't let an idiot be involved. We had H posts and some genius measured 32.5 yards from one post and 32.5 yards from the other. Totally forgot about the space in the middle. We pretended it was intentional as a "get-back" line.
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Post by newt21 on Jun 24, 2012 17:33:33 GMT -6
A word to the wise: don't let an idiot be involved. Don't think I could've said it better myself! |
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Post by Chris Clement on Jun 24, 2012 19:45:12 GMT -6
Pretty much words to live by, I suppose.
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Post by coachbleu on Jun 24, 2012 22:52:27 GMT -6
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riggsbm
Sophomore Member
Posts: 177
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Post by riggsbm on Jun 25, 2012 19:23:01 GMT -6
Thanks men. I do use the 3-4-5 method. My assistant coach had some other method of getting the perfect corners by making a giant X which stretches to all 4 corners of the field. Anyone use that?
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Post by Chris Clement on Jun 25, 2012 20:58:24 GMT -6
 How would you do that? How would you know that the corners of your X are in the right spots? I can see it working on paper maybe but not on grass. |
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raiderx
Sophomore Member
Posts: 222 
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Post by raiderx on Jun 25, 2012 23:24:11 GMT -6
Went to maintenance to get more paint one time and left the Jr. High coaches painting practice fields...came back and they had run one of the yard lines to the wrong mark...basically one mark up...had to get some green paint and paint over the mess-up.
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Post by coachbrek on Jun 26, 2012 6:30:02 GMT -6
We used to measure square and mark the field every year but it took us half the night to get it done.
We paid a local civil engeneering company to survey the field, measure it and put down permanent monuments it did not cost very much and now we just run the strings and paint, it takes us a fraction of the time. Money well spent.
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Post by mahonz on Jun 26, 2012 10:38:45 GMT -6
Thanks men. I do use the 3-4-5 method. My assistant coach had some other method of getting the perfect corners by making a giant X which stretches to all 4 corners of the field. Anyone use that? If this is for a practice field and you only want boundaries that would work but you’d most likely end up with a parallelogram. Are there permanent goal posts? Those would be helpful monuments in x-measuring out a squared rectangle. It wouldn’t be perfect but functional if that’s all you need. You wouldnt need to make anything, you would need three long tape measures to get it done. |
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Post by Chris Clement on Jun 26, 2012 10:55:13 GMT -6
I guess if you could define the midpoint and have all your lines run through there, it would be better if you had H posts. It's also important to remember that the ground shifts, and if your field has been there a long time it's unlikely those goal posts are still 100 yards apart.
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Post by huthuthut on Jun 26, 2012 14:50:29 GMT -6
I've been coaching 28 years. I loved my two yrs in tx where we didn't have to paint our game or practice fields. But the stories I could tell about the other years! Painting "01, 02" instead of "10, 20". (painted it so the 10 was if you were standing on the center of the field. Game field where 15 yard line ran from the 14 on one side to the 16 on the other (and no one caught it!). Practice fields where the coaches ran lines from goalline on one side to 5 on other. Then 5 to 10 etc. and no one catches it til they're at the other end. Numbers and hashes no where near where they should be. Yard lines that touch the sideline is very common (FYI, they're not supposed to touch except for the goalline).
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Post by huthuthut on Jun 29, 2012 7:13:10 GMT -6
Has anyone ever seen a machine that "digs" the lines? When I was in Texas our school had a machine that would cut the lines about 3-4 inches wide as straight and clean as you could imagine. Our maintenance crew would cut the lines on our practice field at the beginning of the season and again around the middle of the season as the grass began to fill in the lines.
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