I’ve shown how to make texture on our projects many times on this blog. What it possible is limited only by your imagination. When the texture runs all the way to the edge of your project it’s time to do a little hand work.  In our shop we insist that the edges of our signs look as good as the front face. In our current project almost all of the signs can be viewed from all angles. Sculptural elements that are part of the sign take things over the top so all parts and sides of the signs need to be property finished with texture.

The Crow’s Nest sign sports a heavy and deep cartoon woodgrain. This woodgrain is flipped on the back meaning the two sides line up nicely. I spent about twenty minutes with our air powered die grinder carving the heavy grain through the sides, bottom and top. Because the grain lines were so broad on this piece it was a lot less work than if it was fined grained. Even the 30 lb board works easily, especially with powerful air powered tools. Those few minutes with the die grinder really make a big difference.

Once the pieces had all been routed it was time to the glue up. We used the routed slots in the center of the sign as a jig to tack up the steel frames, then pulled them out and did the final welding. Some steel eye bolts were also welded to the top of the frame. A 5/8″ steel bar was welded to the post side of the sign as well. The sign was hung from the matching eye bolts on the structural steel post. Then we welded the 5/8″ steel rod to the post on the bottom to keep the sign from swinging should there be a strong wind.

I then added the letting using the same font we are using on some of the other signs in the park. A few of the letters were modified and tweaked to make the sign read better. I also added the rivets around the panel.

I decided to route the sign in four layers, front and back as well as two layers for the center of the sign. The two center layers would have slots cut in them for the welded step frame. Each layer was also different as they incorporated different layers of the engineer and his arms. The two back layers were flipped so the two halves of the sign fit together. The center sections of the sign looked like this (except one was flipped so they for together and the step could be laminated into the center)

The two outside layers looked like this. On the show side of the sign I included a cutout of the engineer’s arm which will sit on the window ledge.

I built the two sides at the same time, starting with a flat relief.

I then imported a bitmap and used it to modify the reliefs. It created a subtle texture.

I then added the rivets, modifying the base relief by using the dome tool.

The next step was to create the door inserts. I did this by building separate flat reliefs.

I then modified these reliefs by adding a woodgrain texture from my TEXTURE MAGIC bitmap collection.

I then used the replace tool to put this panel into place on the base relief. I could have used the MERGED LOWEST command to get the same result.

To check that things went as planned I looked at the front view. I’ve marked a red arrow to indicate how the panel looks in place.

The lettering outline was the next step, once again building them as separate reliefs.

These were MERGED HIGHEST with the base reliefs.

The bevelled lettering was the next step, achieved by using the ad too command with the bevel tool.

The two window sills and the engineer’s arm were then built as separate reliefs the full thickness of the panels. I then selected the various components (of each panel) and merged them to create a single relief.