Dan Sawatzky’s Blog

The Bucky Beaver sign post is partially chewed through and is to lean precariously over the bumper boat pool. Doing this was relatively easy. I just cut a wedge our of the post and then welded the square tubing back up. The sign structure is all hidden inside. I first welded up a frame while the steel was inside the sign, but with one side open for access Here’s another closeup showing how the eye bolt was welded to some flat bar which is turn welded to the square tubing. And here’s the sign glued up and ready for some hand work.

As I mentioned in my last post building a sign with modern software like EnRoute and using a MultiCam makes the task of building this sign a whole lot easier and faster. As always we started with vectors of the various components of the sign. I first created flat reliefs of the two boards that go through the sign. Then I added bitmaps to each board (from my bitmap collection)  Then it was on to the center oval

This is about the longest I’ve ever sat on a design for a sign but after twelve years it is finally time to build it. Back when I designed it I had no MultiCam CNC router and no fancy programs. I didn’t use Precision Board back then either. Back then, if the sign had been made it would have all been done by hand.

Work continues at a busy pace in our shop. It’s my job to design and weld the structure for each piece. The fellows doing the lathing (tying on the galvanized diamond lath) are only a day or two behind and catching up fast.

Work has begun in earnest on the Cultus Lake Adventure Park project. One of the areas is a kids play area called Wilderness Trails. One of five projects started was this sign.  To create the name I first drew it quickly in my sketchbook. Because the park is aimed at young kids I used upper and lower case letters and made it as readable as possible.  I then hand vectorized the drawing in a few minutes.  I then imported the vectors into EnRoute and began building the sign file