Secrets of a Portable Dance Floor

Hi there Cloggers. How many of you have dreamed of  having an option to not dance on sticky blacktop pavements or concrete that tears up your shoes from being so rough, or have you thought our sounds would sound soooo much cooler if we had a wood floor  with a little air underneath it to enhance the sound when we dance. Of course the most adventurous of you probably priced a commercially made portable dance floor (OUCH!!! Never want to do that again!)

Well I’m here to chase off those ranks of snake oil salesmen and tell you that with a little bit of time in the wood shop you can turn out for your team a good functional portable wooden dance floor at a reasonable cost.  Our dance floor is 12’ x 20’ and nicely accommodates 2 rows of dancers 5 across. With a couple of dancers help I can have the dance floor ready to dance on in less than a half hour of setup time.

Another advantage to using the design I am revealing to you now is that some day we may find a place to have a workshop or some other event if we only had a floor. Several IPCA clubs could bring their floors to the event to make one Superfloor. Cool EH?

So how do you go about building this percussive dancers mobile dream?

You start by getting sheets of ¾“ plywood, cut each sheet in half so that they are 4’ by 4’.  To make a 12’ x 20’ dance floor you will need 15 4’ x 4’ pieces. (Use plywood as you will probably not find OSB near as durable and make sure one side which will face up has a nice smooth finish.)

Now I said we are going to put some air under that floor so we get a little more sound out of the floor than if it was laying flat on the ground. To do this we will need 2x2s 8’ long. You will need 2 ½ for each section of floor or 38 2x2s 8’  for a 12’ x 20’ dance floor. Cut 2 pieces exactly 4’ long and 3 pieces 45” long (3 inches shorter than 4’). Use C clamps to hold the boards in place and then fasten them to each section in the pattern shown in the adjacent drawing.  My first few panels I put together using 1 5/8” Drywall screws 9 evenly spaced on each 2x2(It’s also a good idea to predrill the screw holes because 2x2s are known to want to split), but then I did some fast talking with my wife and I got a brad nailer and boy did that speed up the process, of course we can’t take those pieces of stage through the carry on luggage in an airport cuz they’ll drive the metal detectors crazy.

Now to hold the panels together you’ll need some more 3/4” plywood. Where you have 4 pieces come together you’ll need to cut a piece 18” long and 10” wide. For our 12 by 20 dance floor you’ll need 8 of these, then where you only have two pieces join together in along the front or the back cut a piece 18” long and 5” wide (8 of these) and where the panels join on the sides make them 10” by 9” (4 of these) Also cut up a bunch of 2”x4”s 7 7/16 long you’ll need 56 of these pieces. Attach the 2”X4” as shown in the diagram.

Now after cutting up all these little pieces of plywood you will have some left over scraps. Let’s cut them a little more so that they are 1 ½” wide and make them at least 6” long. Attach them so that they are on the middle of each of the 2”x2”s.  As shown by the solid arrows in the illustration. Also on four of the panels put a 6 inch strip on each side of 1 of the corners. ( Very important!! Just one corner!!) Use screws on the corner, just in case we need to make a super floor with

 several teams floors.

OK now use ¼ round router bit and round of the plywood edges of each panel and the inside edges of all the 2”x4” on the joint pieces. (This is so you don’t catch your shoes on the edges and it is a little easier fitting the pieces together into the slots between the 2”x4”s.)

Now are you ready to put it all together and try it out? You betcha!! Start with a corner panel, lay it down, put a 4 corner joint piece kiddy corner from the corner. One of the Long joint pieces along the back corner that doesn’t have plywood strips on the corner and one of the stubby pieces on the side. I work the back row to the front row. So continue along the back laying the panels into the connector and adding the next connector. I recommend a stomp double or two to encourage the panels to drop in when they get stubborn.

Once you have checked everything out and have made sure it fits together right, I recommend a coat of stain to seal the floor from the elements. This floor has worked for us fairly well on reasonably level surfaces. If your wood working skills are not that of a master craftsman you may want to work with the screws to put the pieces together since it is easier to undo and adjust. Have fun and enjoy dancing on it!

Ken Seng, The Sugar Creek Cloggers.