Pictures of the finished park – part 3

Today I have a last load of pictures of the Cultus Lake Adventure Park. The signs on the western side of the building have been featured here before as they went through various stages of construction. They were designed in EnRoute and then routed from Precision Board on our Multicam router. The building itself was built by the owner but we did the entire exterior treatment using sculpted fiberglass reinforced concrete. We painted using the same techniques we used on most of our other projects using base colors and them glazes to highlight the textures we love.

 featured the saloon sign last time but now finally have a nice shot of the entire building.

Now we are back in our shop getting ready for the next large project. First we took everything down from the walls and cleaned everything off. The entire shop got a fresh coat of paint and the samples were culled and then will get put back up on the walls for display. 
We are also landscaping the yard from one end to the other and even paving the driveway at last. By month’s end we will be ready to get back to work once more. We have more than fourteen months worth of fabulous projects on the drawing board. 
Stay tuned for some pretty fun stuff…
-dan

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

Searching For The Right Tool On An Interior LED-Lighted Sign

Having the right tool for the job is a pretty important aspect of being a sign maker. Sometimes that tool can cost $10,000 or sometimes it could cost $10. The thing is, when you need it, you need it. Talking with Steve Kolacz, owner of GrafiXhouse Design Studio in Garner, NC, about a recent sign he made, revealed a situation we believe all sign makers can relate to.

Steve’s job was to build an interior sign for a church that could light up at the flip of a switch to let kids know when it was time for them to go into the service. His first step was to design the sign in Adobe Illustrator, followed by selecting the materials he would use for the job: Precision Board, PVC, Dibond and Lexan.

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Each substrate was cut in turn on Steve’s ShopBot CNC machine, and put together with a combination of VHB tape and 3M Epoxy.

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Wedge-Cut Quandary

Needing to make a wedge cut on a piece of Precision Board to create a downward-sloping, faux stoplight, Steve found himself in a tough spot – he couldn’t make the cut with his bandsaw because the piece was too big, and he didn’t want to do it on his CNC machine because that would have meant creating a file and spending much more time than necessary on a piece requiring only a single cut. He even asked his neighbor (which is a custom cabinet shop) next door, the ones with the giant table saw and wood working equipment if they would cut it, but they didn’t want anything to do with it.

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Diagram showing the wedge cut Steve needed to make

Bow Saw To The Rescue

In his own words, “after running out of options, and wanting to get this cut over with, I did a slow look around my shop and saw my bow saw in the corner of my eye. I picked it up, walked over to the table and one-handed cut that wedge no problem. All I needed to do afterwards was sand it smooth with my disc sander. The whole process took about 5 minutes. It would have never worked with wood,” says Kolacz.

photoSteve’s bow saw

This mid-sign incident, while not catastrophic, really says a lot to us about what it means to be a sign maker – an unforeseen circumstance needing to be remedied by some quick thinking.

Since the stoplight needed to light up so the kids would know it was time to put the blocks down and get ready for some churchin’, Steve wired LED’s into the yellow stoplight housing and covered each opening with a translucent piece of Lexan.

The entire sign was primed with Kilz Latex Primer and painted with a combination of acrylic and enamels, with the “Quest” portion being airbrushed with a Behr Latex paint. All in all, a beautiful multi-media sign!

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Steve Kolacz has owned GrafiXhouse Design Studio since 2002. Additional works of art, signs and illustrations can be seen on his website at: www.grafixhouse.net.

We’ve also featured Steve in two previous articles:

 The Art of Hand-Carved Signs/Grafixhouse Design Studio

3-D HDU Signage: To Rout or Carve?

 

 

Southwestern-Themed Signage & Art: Dan Keith Spotlight

Famous for its Southwest Cuisine, rich cultural heritage and popular extra-terrestrial hangout Roswell, New Mexico is a diverse and unique location. San Acacia resident and Jack-of-all-trades Dan Keith has been an artist all his life and has compiled such an amazing array of Precision Board projects (sculptures, signs, patterns, and more), that we’ve decided to showcase a portion of his art.

 These two signs were built by Dan for the well-known Rancho Corazon and Rancho La Querencia, horse-ranches, which have merged into one. Both signs were built using Precision Board.

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Rancho La Querencia

Dan’s father, A.J. Keith, had a major influence on both Dan and his art career. AJ learned photo-engraving from a German master engraver during the U.S. occupation of Germany after World War 2. After returning to the US, he began printing plates for all the local papers in Roswell, NM, enlisting a very young Dan as his helper.

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Age 9 saw Dan and family move to Corrales, NM where he helped his father build an house and studio for his oil paintings. At the same time, Dan was apprenticed to a lady sculptor, cementing his involvement in the art trade.

This mirror frame was crafted by Dan out of Precision Board PBLT-30, based off his memories of attending the Kimo Theater in Albuquerque as a young boy. The Kimo Theater was built in 1927 in the popular-at-the-time Pueblo Deco style.

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Following a diverse period of teenage years that included stints in logging, cowboying, and participating in the construction of the Trans-Canadian Highway, Dan enlisted in the Air Force Reserve. After completing his service in 1971, he started building an art foundry so he could build western-style sculptures like his Dad.

Completion of the foundry saw his most serious learning curve begin on all things related to and involving industrial processes. Curiosity and necessity forced him to learn how to make all the equipment he needed, picking up information about almost all fabrication and production processes throughout and becoming a “Jack of all trades.”

Dan is still heavily involved in learning, researching and implementing industrial processes and techniques. These include sign making, metal casting, welding, plasma cutting, wood working, CNC routing, digital design, stained glass, gourd art, mold making, metal fabrication, metal forming, prop making, blacksmithing and more. Be sure to see additional information on his new website, rlybrdboxco.com or his blog, dansfoundry.bogspot.com.

Old wood? Nope. This is Precision Board Plus with a piece of vinyl cleverly applied over the top of it. Dan Keith strikes again!

sign made for friend of western livestock

The Crow Indian head Dan sculpted in commemoration of his father:

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Sign made by Dan out of Precision Board:

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Dan and his wife Cheryl:

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Pictures of the finished park – part two

Everywhere one looks in the Cultus Lake Adventure Park there is a great photo to be had. From the road the park looks inviting. We carefully layered the elements to maximize the space but also to show great from the road.

Everything is designed to integrate and work together. Space was tight in this facility and yet we managed to squeeze room in for long cue lines that will hold lots of guests and still leave the main pathways free of congestion. No detail went untouched. The signs, posts and operator booths  all are fully themed to tell the story.

The Wilderness trail is already a hit with our young guests and their parents. 
The gold panning is in this area and the sign is on the water tower.
Kids enjoy working the old pump handle to make the water come out. In the background is the old rail inspection car with a crank they can turn there as well.

 The bicycle rental area is outside the park gates..

I have plenty more pictures to show in the next post. Stay tuned…
-dan

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

Pictures of finished park – part one

Cultus Lake Adventure Park is now finished and open to rave reviews by the public. It’s great to see everyone enjoying the project we worked on for so long! Since the park has opened I’ve been doing my best to get good pictures. The key is to get there at different times each day as the light changes every hour. I’ll be posting pictures of the final project in the next few posts.

We built Giggle RidgeAdventure Golf fourteen years ago. Back then we planted a high hedge on the south side of the park to block the views from the golf as the neighbor attraction wasn’t very pretty. As we designed the Adventure Park our plan was to take out the bordering hedges and instead integrate the new features and attractions into the old adventure golf. The trees were trimmed of their lower branches to offer a fabulous view from the old attraction.

The park is small but packed with features. This sign started out as a directional sign but we instead changed it to point FUN in every direction.
A new entrance on the east side of the park has this giant balloon photo op for guests.

Another very popular photo op is the horse and wagon. It’s not often that there isn’t someone perched on the horse or sitting in the wagon.
One of the more popular rides is undoubtably the Buckin’ Bronco.

In hot weather Bucky’s Bumper Boats always has a long line. I love the contrast of the warm colors with the cool blues of the pool.

The Carousel and Balloon Adventure is also popular.  The landscaping made a huge difference all through the park, adding life to our concrete sculptural work.

 Almost everyone stops and points out the laughing horse on the Saloon sign. The sign does exactly as I hoped.

I’ll be posting lots more pictures in coming days. The park looks so great!
-dan

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