It’s been a while since I had any time to work on the Lucky Jim sign but tonight I squeezed in about half an hour to do a few things and make significant progress. I cut a few pieces on the band saw including the two axles and the frame. I also cut some axles from 1/4″ steel pencil rod and then drilled the holes (slightly off kilter) for the wheels.
Yesterday I routed the address marker for the new house. It turned out really nice. The piece will blend perfectly into the other house trim and yet stand out when someone wants to know our house number – not that they won’t know it is our house.
Sometimes the files that appear real simple have a lot of steps. Our address sign for the new house was such a piece.
The house project is still going full blast. The outside finishes are almost done, with the windows now being installed. Now it is time to begin putting up the trim – as soon as it is all painted and glazed.
I often get asked where I get all my ideas. The answer of course is everything I see and imagine
Today was a busy day but I couldn’t resist working just a little on the Lucky Jim Mine sign. The MultiCam was busy routing exterior moldings for the house but as each file finished I snuck in the railroad wheels and tracks on what would have been scrap. I actually ran the wheels twice as the first time they were simply too big for the sign I was building
The wheels of the little mine car are a great exercise to practice our building of various shaped reliefs and how to merge them into a final shape which we want. As we build the reliefs we have to keep in mind the final result and then think of what we have to add or take away to get exactly that.
The house is a fun project and we’ve used EnRoute, Precision Board and our MultiCam plenty but lately I’ve been itching for something a little more creative. With the house we typically don’t need one copy of anything but instead keep the router busy making fifty copies of what we need. That is a little too much like production work and that doesn’t totally scratch my creative itch after a while.
I often get asked what we teach at one of our Sign Magic Workshops. In this short format it is very hard to describe..