Dan Sawatzky’s Blog

LOTS of signs (and other stuff) in our future!

LOTS of signs (and other stuff) in our future!

In the last few weeks I have run the MultiCam only a little for I have instead been busy at the design table working up the ideas for a large project that will keep us busy into next summer. It’s a small theme park called Cultus Lake Adventure Park. I’ll be showing lots of progress here of course in the next months but for now I’d love to show some of the sign designs I am working on. Everything will be dimensional of course and our role will be to create all of the signs and the surrounding environments as well. So here’s a sneak peek at some of the sign concept designs for the rides and attractions..

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Putting up outside trim

Putting up outside trim

Late last summer I posted pictures and file creation blogs of the outside trim of the new house. As the summer weather waned we tucked all the pieces away and concentrated our efforts on finishing the inside of the house. That work took until recently to substantially finish to the point we could move in at last a few weeks ago. Then came the big job of emptying the old house and stripping it of usable items. Today it came down at last.

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Shoppin’

Shoppin’

The next letter for this sign were for the word ‘SHOP’. The ‘S’ is a length of hose, bent into an ‘S’ shape. A round fitting on each end looks snazzy.  These were created using the dome tool To create the fittings on each end I created a longer vector, used the dome tool to create the relief and then overlaid a zero height smaller shape, By merging the longer shape to this I could effectively clip the ends square. The ‘H’ is a combination of various shapes which were then MERGED HIGHEST to the base relief as a last step

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‘WORK’ should always be this much fun!

‘WORK’ should always be this much fun!

The workshop/tool file was fun to do – just the kind of complex file I love to do. The key to doing this kind of work is to first have a clear idea of what you intend to do and then think about the order in which you need to do it. Understanding what a program like EnRoute can do is important. A file like this can teach us a lot in a hurry. Since there were so many steps and pictures I’ll be posting this in two steps

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Workshop gear lettering

Workshop gear lettering

The gear sign has lain dormant for a week while I was very busy with other things. Today I finally had time to work a little on it but in last week’s business I must of stuck the file somewhere that I simply couldn’t remember. So I had to build another. Then it was on to the tool lettering. The first was the ‘W’.

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Paint!

Paint!

This weekend is a statutory holiday in our province so the crew is off this Monday. This gives me a little more time to catch up on some personal projects – one of which is the mechanical fish of course. With Labor Day now less than a month distant the ‘competition’ deadline is looming. Looking at my schedule for the rest of the month means I had to put a few hours in to make sure I don’t get behind.

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Workshop gear – part one

Workshop gear – part one

At our last workshop one of our attendees really fell in love with our workshop door signs. He asked me for the file. Sadly it is long since gone but I offered to create another and post it here on the blog. The original sign was obviously sponsored by the movie ‘Robots’ which was a little more current at the time. I created the danger lettering vectors in Illustrator as I am used to the way it handles lettering

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Outside trim

Outside trim

Last fall I routed a whole bunch of outside trim for the house but as the cooler weather of the season set in we tucked it away and concentrated instead on the inside of the house. Now, with the inside largely complete we are turning out attention once again to the outside. The trim features layered heart insets and is painted with base coats and three colored glazes. It was designed in EnRoute of course and routed from 30 lb Precision Board on our MultiCam. It will take the rest of the week to finish off the painting of the existing trim.

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To Hells’ Gate and back

Today my grand daughter and I visited Hell’s Gate Airtram, an attraction we built a large piece for many years ago. As we visited it brought back many memories. Almost eight years ago now we bought our first MultiCam Router. I remember well the overwhelming feeling of complexity of both EnRoute and the whole idea of operating such a complicated piece of machinery.

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