“If I were to have used a lower density, the prismatic letters wouldn’t look half as sharp,” says Jim Dawson, owner of Synergy Sign & Graphics. He’s talking about a sign he made recently for F.S.R.C. Tanks, Inc., boasting prismatic letters that came out sharp as a knife.
Jim is the previous builder of the custom gearbox made from Precision Board Plus PBLT-30 and is well known for his creativity and innovation.“I wanted this sign to scream something different, something that would make it stand out from the normal signs people see every day. The owner of F.S.R.C. asked us to build him a sign that would be unique, but would also last forever, and we came up with the perfect idea,” recalls Dawson.
Jim started this job with two sheets of 2″ x 4′ x 8′ Precision Board Plus PBLT-30, cutting them both on his 5′ x 10′ MultiCam CNC machine with software. “We CNC routed the 30lb. Precision Board, which is twice as dense as the 15lb. and can hold an extremely high level of detail. I knew if I were to try 15lb, the prismatic letters wouldn’t have the same pop as 30lb, which weighed in on my final decision,” explains Jim. “After we CNC-routed each face, we tig-welded an aluminum frame and attached it to the back of each sheet to provide strengthening and reinforcement.”
The pillars, as you may notice, are neither identical, nor entirely uniform. “As a graduate of Dan Sawatzky’s sculpting class, and thus, an amateur sculptor, I decided to shape the fiberglass-reinforced concrete posts entirely by hand. By doing this we hoped to give part of the sign a truly man-made aspect, as opposed to using cardboard forms as would most often be the case,” states Dawson.
Of course, the detail on the substrate isn’t the only thing that stands out on this sign. “We used a pretty bright color combination for the sign to add to it’s ‘wow’ factor,” reveals Jim. “After we primed the sign with Coastal’s FSC-88WB Primer/Filler, we used Sherwin-Williams Acrylic Latex Paints, Incredible White and SW6967 Frank Blue, to give it a really vibrant finish.”
Synergy Sign & Graphics is not your ordinary sign shop! See more of their beautiful designs here.
