Dan Sawatzky’s Blog

A honey of a sign

We’ll be building two copies of the HoneyPot sign. One will go on the operator’s booth while the second (With a sculpted bee) will be positioned at the start of the queue. The routing file was created with three layers, rather than the two the concept art suggested. This is so the sign will better match the many others already in the park. The sign is to be fabricated in three layers with a welded steel frame laminated into the center layer

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It’s the little things

Our MultiCam CNC plasma cutter has dramatically changed the way we fabricate our themed pieces. In the process it has ramped up the quality and durability of our work. The handy machine has also increased out productivity in a large measure.

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Some project take a long while!

A like more than three and a half years ago I designed the primary sign for Skallywag Bay adventure Park. I designed he routing files a short time later but it would be another year before we started to build two copies of the sign. That process was chronicled  here . We routed he hulls of the ships from multiple layers of 2″ thick 30 lb Precision Board. These were glued together and hen we sculpted the details onto the two copies of the ship.

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More signs at Skallywag Bay

There were a whole lot of signs which we did for Skallywag Bay in Trinidad and I’e been itching to get them installed for quite some time. During my last visit to the site we got almost all of the larger pieces placed around the site. We did it using a 60′ zoom boom which is a very handy machine. I have my forklift licence for our little machine at the shop but the larger machine was a whole new experience! The key is to go slow and easy. Every move is amplified when the boom is fully extended and to reach these pieces we did just that most of the time

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Piece by pieceS

It is pure magic as we install the scores of features at Skallywag Bay in Trinidad. It’s been four years since we started building the fourteen shipping containers full of features. We packed the last of them into the containers more than two years ago. Now at last it is time to install everything. Today was the day to assemble two of the attraction signs.

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One track mine concepts…

Last month I did a step by step of building a little display tank. It was a fun little project!  Now i looks like we may just get to build a series of tracked features which use some of those ideas. A client has asked us to come up with some ideas for a mining theme adventure golf. Our first concept was pretty conventional, being a narrow gauge mining railroad car

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Packing up the display.

The booth showed extremely well over the last our days as about 25,000 people came by. Our display did exactly what it was designed to do and that was attract attention of all those who walked by. We handed out a lot of business cards, scanned many badges. We met so many great people in our industry! At the end of the show there is always a mad scramble to pack up the displays

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