A Beautiful Sign in a Beautiful Location

The designers and fabricators at Sign Design and Fabrication of Dahlonega, GA are true artisans that take great pride in delivering a sign to their clients that both delights and helps the register ring! Their work can be found all over the country, including the Aloha state.

Faux Mahogany and Ash Finish Applied to Precision Board Plus

SD&F was asked to design his sign, inspired by the popular 1970’s police drama named in honor of Hawaii’s status as the 50th state. Originally, the design called for the sign to be constructed of solid Mahogany and Ash, but that proved to be cost prohibitive and these materials are becoming increasingly hard to find. Instead, Wade Parker and his crew chose the superior machining characteristics of Precision Board Plus along with a faux finish to create genuine look of fine wood they were going for.

Sign Artist David Weeks took inspiration from the image of the iconic cresting wave featured at the beginning of each episode of the long-running TV program. “Using Precision Board Plus, we split the sign into three components”, says Wade. “The top level was CNC routed in 1″ Precision Board Plus and rounded off with a quarter round bit. Both this level and the 1.5″ thick oval backboard were primed and faux finished by our artists to look like real wood. This assembly was then mounted to a custom bracket we designed. The top half of the bracket in 2″ Precision Board Plus was permanently attached to the back of the display”.

To complete the effect of the sign, which now hangs in a dimly lit lounge on the Big Island, SD&F installed LED lighting around the back perimeter. Wade and his crew at Sign Design and Fabrication take pride in offering a variety of in-house services including sandblasted signs in high density urethane (HDU) and wood, CNC v-groove routed signs, custom business logo and lobby style displays, sign shields, awards and plaques, and custom architectural monument signs. Check out their website and portfolio at www.signdesignandfabrication.com.

TSF-45: Creating Durable and Flexible Sign Textures

Looking for a tough yet flexible product that easily allows you to simultaneously add texture, protection and value to your signs? Whether for environmental reasons or the desire to use a material that lasts longer and performs better than wood, Sign & Model makers are increasingly turning to wood substitutes like Precision Board Plus. And with TSF-45, it’s easy to create the look of wood grain on a more environmentally-friendly substrate that will last much longer than wood.

Used right out of the can and requiring no mixing, TSF-45 readily adheres to Precision Board Plus HDU, as well as a variety of other substrates such as concrete, wood, steel, glass, polystyrene, even galvanized metal. As such, it works well for blending and texturing dissimilar sign elements and is great for dressing up steel poles, etc.

Application Tips

Apply TSF-45 with a trowel, spatula, hopper, or Painter’s Mitt. Apply in two coats. Work first coat directly into surface and be sure to achieve total wet out and intimate surface contact. Apply sufficient material during second coat to allow the surface to be worked into the desired effect. First coat does not have to completely dry prior to second coat. Use trowel, spatula, other flat tools, or stipple rollers to achieve varying textures. Add a wood grain effect with a comb or tongue depressor, or experiment with other implements you have around the workshop. See our TSF-45 data sheet for additional data and complete application instructions.

When dry, TSF-45 has the consistency and durability of the bottom of an athletic shoe. It is completely UV stable and does not need to be primed prior to finishing. Since TSF-45 remains flexible, be sure to use a paint that can tolerate some movement.

Workplace to school room

In the last days we have been busy. Name plaques have been designed, routed and painted. Letting samples have been cut from Precision Board for our students to paint. Materials are readied, tables and chairs are ready to go. Every inch if the shop has been cleaned, organized and readied for our guests to arrive. Some of our guests have traveled far, eager to start. Everyone will arrive in Yarrow tomorrow. We’ll get acquainted and then kick off the learning and fun.
School is in tomorrow. I can hardly wait!
-dan

Published with permission from precisionboard.blogspot.com. Source.

Cobbling together a name plaque

Ted’s name only has three letters allowing me to do something cool with his name on the plaque. Each letter would be comprised of individual boards.  The pegs that ‘hold’ them together would be built separately.  The vectors were drawn in EnRoute.
Each board was created as a flat relief, then rotated as necessary and positioned on a couple of wood grain bitmaps from my TEXTURE MAGIC collection. The bitmap woodgrains were applied to the reliefs. Then the individual reliefs were rotated back and arranged to form the letters once more. Then I used the up/down arrow to position each piece vertically. The pegs were then created separately and positioned in the same manner.
Then I created a background vector and used it to create a flat relief. Then I imported the splotches bitmap and applied it to the relief. All the pieces were then merged highest to form one piece.
As quick as that another name plaque was ready to send to the MultiCam.
 -dan

Published with permission from precisionboard.blogspot.com. Source.

Rope trick

For every workshop one of the name plaques includes what I call the ‘rope trick’. It is a very cool feature of EnRoute.
The vectors were straight forward. I would build this file in segments and then merge highest as a last step. This would allow me the ability to control and adjust the heights of all the elements with total control and flexibility.
For the rope border I created a series of circle vectors which were then combined. You can see the result in the shot below this one… the small rope cross section on the lower left of the frame.
First up was the frame border…  a simple domed relief.
Then it was time to create the rope. I opened the extrude contours menu and then the various options. I wanted to create a mesh object. This will be turned into a relief later after it is in position. The slices and stacks determine how detailed your mesh will be. I tend to crank things way up but it makes for large files. Then I type in how many revolutions the rope will twist…  this is a matter of trying a number and then doing it again with a different value if need be. Follow the steps in the menu to generate the mesh object.
When I created the mesh it does not appear because it creates it centered on the base line…  and my relief was taller than that – hiding it. Looking in the front view solved that. I used mu up arrow to nudge it into position( in the front view)
 Then I combined the relief and the mesh. When rendered it looks like this.  Once I was satisfied I deleted the mesh object.
I then created a domed relief for the center portion, imported a bitmap called  wiggly weave and applied it to the relief
Next I created a flat relief of the lettering border. This was then modified with an oval vector using the same settings I had used for the oval background. Once modified I nudged it up into position in the front view. Then I modified the relief once more by adding to the relief with the letter vectors to create the prismatic chiseled letters.
Then I combined everything together and sent it to the MultiCam. It was routed from 1.5″ 30 lb Precision Board.
-dan

Published with permission from precisionboard.blogspot.com. Source.