Today we set up the scaffold so I could apply the last of the hand done texture over the background areas of the sign. It made working on the sign a whole lot more comfortable, safer and faster.

Here’s a typical section with the hand done texture done with the air powered die grinder. The screw holes have yet to be filled with Abracadabra Sculpt. I’ll be doing the fox head sculpt with the same material.

Tomorrow we hope to do the bulk of the sculpt with final details to be done on Friday. After that it is on to paint.

Stay tuned…

-dan

The last piece of the Fox and Hounds Pub sign was glued in place today. There are 21 pieces in all. Now it is on to the last of the carving and then the sculpting of the fox.

Tomorrow we’ll set up a scaffold to work from the top down, painting as we go. It will make it a whole lot easier and more comfortable to work. Stay tuned for pictures and more progress reports.

-dan

As big as the sign looked as we began to assemble it, it only looks larger with each additional piece. We are working on the lower portions of the sign to start. The bulk of the work at this point is to take care of the glue joints, even things out and add the texture I desire on the face of the sign. Once that is done we’ll finish up the top bits and then start in on the fox head sculpt. Then we’ll work our way down with the paint.

It is coming together fairly quick. Stay tuned for more…

-dan

The sliced and diced sign needed to be put back together again when it was off the MultiCam. The first task was to thoroughly clean the Precision Board. Since the boards were so large the easiest way to accomplish the task was to use the pressure washer. It would also dampen the surfaces in preparation for the one part PB Bond 240 glue we would use to securely fasten them together. The one part glue is activated by a little moisture.

The sign was tall, and would barely fit out of the door upright. The heavy duty dolly was too tall to fit the sign underneath. The solution was to weld a special cradle that tipped the sign back a little. It would make gluing the large, heavy boards a little easier and also allow me to work on the bottom edge.

We glued up two layers initially and will add the next layers once things have set up nice and firm.

As a point of reference the ladder behind the sign is six feet tall. Stay tuned for the next steps.

-dan

We started with a logo I had designed . The vectors were far too complex to create routing files.

All the line work was first to go and then I reduced the fox to a simple outline. This work was done in Illustrator, the same program as I had used to create the logo.

I then imported the vectors into EnRoute and scaled them up to the size we needed.

Then I broke out and duplicated the vectors to create the six layers of the sign.

Then I sliced up each vector to fit on full sheets of Precision Board. 

From here on I’ll create a few reliefs for some bits like the lettering and flag background and then tool path the rest as cutouts. The routing didn’t take long. Next time I’ll be showing how we started gluing it all together. Stay tuned…

-dan