The Mine Shaft was so much fun in '12, we decided to DOUBLE it.

The mine shaft in '12 was 10x20. For '13 it becomes a 20x20 maze of TERROR.

One of the new additions is a large hidden passageway that an actor will be stationed inside. 3 feet wide and 16 feet long and loaded with drop windows and surprises to startle visitors. Here's a copy of the planned layout - the passageway is pictured on the left with the actor icon inside it:

About 3 feet wide and 16 feet long - plenty of room for an actor to patrol inside and ambush victims as they pass by. A drop window at eye level on the first side and another door down low in the final passage to catch them again before they catch their breath.

The hidden compartment is completely contained within the mine shaft structure - which is basically a large tent with canvas sides and roof - so it only needs to be moderately weather-resistant and needs no top or bottom - just support for the walls.

In an effort to make things easier on ourselves though, some of the major design considerations for new props are; lightweight, portable, and easy to assemble/take-down and store. With that in mind, rather than building the new structure out of traditional lumber/2x4 framing, we're trying a brand new technique - 2" PVC pipe framing! Lighter than lumber, easier to store, easy to assemble and take down (everything fastened with nuts and bolts), and it will never warp! Plus, in an unusual step for us, we have already planned that in '14 we are going to convert the mine shaft into a haunted house, so all the wooden panels on the hidden passageway are being painted white on the inside - so we can reverse them next year and turn them into "house walls".

Some setup pictures below as I was dry-fitting the pieces before we painted the panels.

You can see from the photos above that the frame is entirely 2" PVC pipe, with corner and "T" fittings making up the corners. Pipes were measured out so that each 4 foot wide panel overlaps about 1 inch on each side - allowing us room to overlap the panels and making it easier to bolt the panels to the PVC pipes at the junctions.

I use 1/2" self-tapping #8 screws in all the pipe connections to hold them together - but also allow them to be easily disassembled (vs. gluing them). Holding all the panels onto the pipes are 1/4" by 3.5" long bolts with washers and nuts.

The panels are thin (about 1/4" thick) flooring panels. Each sheet has unique finishes on each side; one looks slightly red with barely any wood grain visible - the other side is lighter with large patterns from knots/etc in the grain. For our purposes we wanted the mine shaft panels to look like old wood so we used the side with the evident grain and painted it with very watered down black paint to give it a Hollywood Haunters aged wood look. Since we also have plans for this secret passage next year that will be more of an indoor look, we painted the other side with a flat white paint - more appropriate for a hallway in a house.