Jack’s name plate was a classic style combining wood with a riveted border. I started with a formal cartoon font to which I added my raised trademark border which will set the lettering off the background. The border was the first to be created as a separate relief. I used the dome tool.
Designing, routing and painting name plates is a wonderful exercise in many ways. The first few are pretty easy. We all have ideas in our heads. But with with each workshop (times two) there are often more than went name plaques to create. All need to be different
This year’s workshops are now just over three week’s away and that means we have to begin serious work to make them the very best ever. As always, the work begins with the design of the name plaques for our guests. Some use techniques that are familiar , and some will use new techniques. As we get into the painting of them we will explore new techniques and also use them to train our painters in our advanced painting methods. The first name plaque is a lot like the file I did for the last sign we made last week but we’ll add some hand sculpting to make it very special for Philip – a returning guest from Australia.
Back in April I created the first routing files for the Skallywag Bay. Now at last it is time to fire up the MultiCam and get going on these projects. Todays sign was for Cookie’s Galley, the food establishment for the park. It will feature Cookie of course the Gruffle cook
Once the MultiCam had done it’s work it was time to assemble the pieces over the welded frame. I first used the air house to blow off the dust from the Precision Board. I used PB Bond 240 glue a one part product that is activated with water moisture. It’s made by the folks at Coastal Enterprises, the same people who make Precision Board
After creating the lettering and tweaking it to my satisfaction it was on to making the reliefs. I first opened my driftwood bitmap from the TEXTURE MAGIC COLLECTION . In EnRoute the imported bitmap opens as defined by the plate. I then stretched it out to make the shape I desired
We are now full blast into the build of the Skallywag Bay Adventure Park for Trinidad. We’ll be busy for the better part of a year in our studio before heading down to the Caribbean Island for the installation of all the pieces. It is going to be both challenging and exciting every step of the way. Because the project is in many ways similar to the one recently completed, Cultus Lake Adventure Park, we will be building on our successes there and hopefully kicking things up one more notch in the process
We are down to the final details on the house project. Through the construction we did over 200 routing files and created thousands of pieces. Now we are down to the last few at last.
If I were asked for the single most reason for our success I would have say our samples. Samples alone weren’t the reason but they play a very important, I would say critical role. Samples do many things for us. First they provide an opportunity for us to learn new things. Back when we got our MultiCam and EnRoute software I could do little more than open the program or turn on the router