Dan Sawatzky’s Blog

Lots of sculpting to finish off routed signs

Lots of sculpting to finish off routed signs

The MultiCam has been idle for a few days as we did all the other work required to catch up to what has been routed. The golf sign (with the ship’s wheel got it’s hand sculpted wheel. Angie got the nod for that task and did a great job! We also started applying the sculpted concrete to the tree and will finish that tomorrow.

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Mass production

Mass production

It’s not often we do multiples of any sign but the golf and park require a whole bunch of these signs – twenty eight in all. Like the rest of the signs in the park they will be dimensional. The fourteen entrance and exit signs were cleaned up with a die grinder and then the edges received their edge grains using the same tool.

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Imaginarium sign done

Imaginarium sign done

Once the gears and the background of the sign received multiple coats of paint it was a simple matter of drilling the center of the gears and then gluing them in place using some short dowels to center them. Then I popped the lid on using a little epoxy to hold everything securely in place. Once the glue had dried I used the die grinder to even out the edges and add a teeny bit of texture to the top as well.

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Way finding signs

Way finding signs

 To provide a seamless experience for the guests of the park most of the signs will be dimensional. This includes some normally mundane entrance and exit signs for the rides and attractions. The ‘sandblasted wood’ signs will have raised, prismatic letters in a cartoon font that matches the park logo. As always it starts with the vectors. I used the outlines of the sign to create a flat relief

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Two more signs done

Two more signs done

The ride signs have taken a while to finish as they were worked on between other projects. Today the Pieces of Eight and Crow’s Nest signs got their finishing touches at last. Two more pieces are not ready to load into the containers and send on their way to Trinidad. There containers full of pieces were sent in the last week with enough pieces now ready to fill there more in January.

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First paint

First paint

It’s not very often we paint our signs in pieces and then assemble afterwards. Most often, especially for outdoor projects I like to route in as few pieces as possible and then securely glue and fasten together before the painting process began. In this case the piece will be displayed indoors. Compared to most pieces we build this one is fragile

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Gearing up for a little fun

Gearing up for a little fun

 My good fiend calls his studio the Imaginarium. I wanted to make him a sign that had some resemblance to a skeleton watch but simpler. The design had some limitations as the finished piece had to travel inside a suitcase. My friend lives in Hawaii. I first did a quick scribble in my sketchbook to work out the basic idea.

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Golf sign start

Golf sign start

We are slowly working our way through a big list of signs for Skallywag Bay. The next major sign on the list is for the adventure golf. The routed signs are actually the smaller portion of the project. Just the same the main sign was both challenging and fun. The first task was to commit the design to vectors

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Get KRAKEN!

Get KRAKEN!

The last ride sign is for the Kraken’s Crew (bumper boats). I decided to go for the life preserver look with the KRAKEN peeking through. I whipped up some simple vectors which wold be used to create the reliefs/  I first used the extrude function to create a mesh object.  Then I used the teardrop vector to create the body of the KRAKEN

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