Blogs
Everyone loves tools!
Cookie’s tool set was a whole lot of fun to create. Since the last post on the project we’ve hand brushed three coats of base colors on (all acrylic house paints). Then the glazes went on the wood, starting with the lightest and working towards the darkest. After the piece is covered the glaze is gently wiped off leaving excess in the crevices and deeper portions of the texture.
Pieces of Eight mounting
The three pieces of the Pieces of 8 sign that were routed from 30lb Precision Board were laminated over a welded steel frame sandwiching the structure inside. The two protruding steel legs were then welded to the steel structure of the post. Once the glue had set (overnight) I used our air powered die grinder to quickly add some woodgrain texture to the sides of the sign. I then welded the sculpture of Tupper in the crow’s nest to the top
Ohio Armament and the Victorian Suite
Today we delivered this little beauty. On this project we had a chance to weld, carve, paint, glaze, and fabricate wood posts. It’s fun to look back and see how far we have come in both the machinery dept. and in our overall capabilities
Special Thanks to all of our new Partners and Sponsors.
We signed on with another Partner today. Modern Masters has been gracious enough to supply us all of the paints for our upcoming gear projects. We will be building 2 gears for Multicam and 1 gear for Coastal Enterprises . All three gears will be getting painted with Modern Masters Metallics and reactive paints. Modern Masters will also be featuring us in their ad materials throughout the coming year, so keep an eye out for us! We would like to send out a formal thanks to Robert and Denis @ Multicam, Greg @ Modern Masters, and Kellie @ Coastal Enterprises for acknowledging our work and helping us raise the bar in the sign industry
Combining hand and machine work
Creating files in EnRoute and routing them on the MultiCam is a huge timesaver. By using bitmaps I can create wonderful textures to add dimension to our projects. But the fact is that after the parts are machines we are only about half way to finish on most of our dimensional projects. Cookie’s utensil rack is a good example
French cleat
We use many creative ways to hang our signs and projects. If it’s heavy we’ll resort to steel brackets or lag bolting it to a structure. But sometimes the sign isn’t too large or heavy. In those cases we often use what we refer to as a french cleat
Cookie’s Galley done
With a large crew to keep busy and big projects in planning it’s not too often I get to spend time with a paint brush in my hand these days. But Cookie has been a pet project from design, sculpt, creating the routing file and through the paint process. Other members of the crew did work on the project a little but the bulk of it has been mine. I decided that I would personally finish the paint job on the lettering portion as well as the the highlights and touchups on.
Sign Paint underway
We are now beginning to assemble and finish the signs for the Trinidad project, starting with Cookie’s Galley sign. In the last few days we’ve done the finishing and laid on the base coats of paint. We use premium exterior house paint for all of our finishes and glazes with good results. Today it was time for the first glaze to bring out the woodgrain textures
Pieces of eight – redo
Sometimes, after I complete a design I just know I could have done better. There’s only one thing to do. DELETE.