Once all the Compnents were attached and the final coats of paint were done I rolled the sign out side for it to cure in the sun for awhile.
At This stage the only thing left to do was to clear coat the entire piece after the paints have had a chance to cure.
Then it was moving day.
I fabricated a craddle that would suspend the sign and allow it to be transported in it's upright position.
Hopefully this craddle will work for other signs of this nature and not be a single use piece.
I let the customer barrow one of my trailers so they would be able to pick up the sign.
The report I received last nigt was that the sign made it to it's destination safely and that everyone tha was able to peek at it gave good reviews.
It should be hung in it's final resting place high above the entrance to Elf University at
Santa's Village In Jefferson New Hampshire for opening weekend.
I Can't wait till Santa sends me some photo of this sign hanging,
Happy learning Elf Class of 2012
I's awsume how when you start to add coloir things really start to pop.
A few coats of White, a few coats of green, a few coats of red, through in a splash of yellow and presto.
Here I've detailed things a little more. I painted the bells gold and the lettering white.
I also couldn't resist attaching the holly and berries to the top.
today I should be able to complete this piece.
Yet to be done;
- glazing of the bells
- attachthe bows above the bells
- second coat the white text boarder
- paint the yellow on the text
- and final coat on the green
I needed to add one more component to the list for the Elf University Sign.
It Called for a Ribbon above the original bell design so created two durable ribbons out of steel and painted it with epoxy primer and the first coat of color.
The coloring process begins.
as you can see the Holly leaves are starting to come to life.
I am waiting patiently for the Primer to arrive for the HDU foam.
I do have a primer that I tried for the first time on some other pieces but I didn't like the way I filled the pours in the foam.
I started the rough work on the next sign on the books.
This is a two sided sign.
Each layer is 1" thick which makes the body of the sign 2" thick when done.
The pieces on the router are back side up (or inside up).
The groves either side of the router spindle dust shield (The yellow box) are made to accept the steel structural frame that will give the sign some strength and also provide attachment points for hanging.
I weld up the steel frame with chain links attached and sandwiched it between the two layers of HDU. Glue the whole thing together with Gorilla Glue.
This shape is 1/4" oversized, I will cut the final shape and engrave the text on the router after the glue dries.
By doing it this way I don't have to clean up the messy glue joint that the gorilla glue leaves.
As I get more and more into these types of signs the size of the signs are Growing.
I fabricated this rolling sign hanging frame to lift and be able to work signs from both sides.
One of the major design considerations was to make this as big as possible and still be able to manuver it around the shop.
This Frame is 12' long and 8'8" tall Capable of easily working a sign that is 11' x 5' double sided. And so far it works flawlessly.
It's difficult to see in the photo, but the sign hangs from a bar suspended on a cable and pulleys with a hand winch attached to one of the upright supports.
So I can roll this over any of the benches I have, hook the sign to the chains around the suspended bar and crank the winch to lift the sign. Once hanging I can easily lower or raise the sign so I can work on it at different hieghts.
Now that the bulk of the sign structure is done We move on to the embelishments.
I hand drew a pencil outline of the holly vine that is to hang at the bottom of the sign. Then it's off to the welding area. I bend and cut and weld and bend and cut and weld and whala looks "Vine to me".
Then out comes the plasma cutter and in a few short minutes the holly leaves are formed.
It takes longer to clean up the rough edges and to detail the shape. "but it's all in the details"
Then a little more welding and bending and now it's really looking like the picture.
After doing a test fit, I welded some studs(bolts) to have some structure to form the berries around.
The berries are formed using sculpting epoxy and then they'll get there final coats of paint.
One of the other embelishments to the sign is the addition of the bell (or Bells).
For this caliber of sign I couldn't see putting just on a flat bell, as was shown in the original design. I glued up a block of HDU 4" thick and set the router to work finding the bells within.
Now dosen't that look better?
I'll add some holly above the bells and a few berries and let the school bells Ring.
now a few more details and on to paint.
I have been given the opportunity to do a sign for a popular theme park Follow along as it comes to life.
The Architects for this project did the actual design for this piece and I merely scanned it into Enroute and started tracing over the shapes to build my cut files.
This piece is two sided and has multiple components.
The Shield, the Ribbon, the ribbon ends, the bell, and the holly leaves and vine.
The first part of the process after the design work is done, is to route out the backs of the two layers of 2" High Density Urethane (HDU) Foam to accept the steel frame that will support the sign and give me a attachment point for the holly vine that will hang below.
The great part with working with this HDU is that it wiil not burn, so welding things in place for alignment purposes is no problem.
This shows the attachment point for the Holly vine.
Then they get flipped and the face gets routed.
If you look closely at the edge of this "rough pass", the sign is dome shaped, the middle of the Sheild were the "t" is is a full 2" thick and the outer edges are 1/2" thick.
When the 2 layers are joined the middle of the sign will be 4" thick and the edges will be 1" thick.
I've built another file and created the Ribbon with the raised text.
Not Shown are the 4 pieces that were cut out for the ribbon ends.
Here is a sneek peak at the mocked up sign at this stage.
As you can see here the ribbon is recessed into the shield.
Now some hand work and carving to give it some life.
Back with more as things Progress:
With the arrival of spring It's time to dust off the list of out door projects that I'd like to tackle this year.
One of the first is to cover the structural supports to the enrty roof leading into the house.
I originaly supported this structure with some log style posts out of natural wood, well those didn't last long.
So the plan here is to make my own log / tree style posts utilizing the concrete sculpting techniques I learned from Dan Sawatzky
www.imaginationcorporation.com
The first step is to get some strips of PT (pressure treated wood) attached to the lolly columns that I can then attach wire lathe to.
To accomplish this I used three vertical pieces of pt per post and wrapped those to the post with tie wire. Then I could staple the wire lathe to these strips of pt to assist in holding one end of the lathe while I wrapped it around the post.
I'll add branches etc. after the initial wrap of lathe I think this will make wrapping easier and when I screw the branch sections to the pt. it will help secure the lathe.
It's a wrap till next time.
I've been dealing with some issues in the shop that have a tendancy to overwhelm the day to day progress of things. (no April Fools here)
Most of these issues stem around connection problems With my new Computer and the Multicam Router.
And they say ethernet connections are reliable. I disagree.
After switching back to Serial connection I hope we finally have something that I can count on.
I have been able to get the first base coat of color on the Moose Tours plaque.
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