Dan Sawatzky’s Blog

Sculpting fun!

I used Abracadabra Sculpting epoxy to sculpt the animal bodies of the train. Steel rods were used as reinforcement. The shapes were first bulked out and allowed to harden. Then I went back over the pieces adding detail as necessary.

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Building the train car files

The mechanical circus animal cars all shared the same routing file. I would sculpt the animal features on later by hand. The routing files were created in EnRoute using the drawing tools. I used the dome tool to create the first relief which formed the car body

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Building a mechanical circus train model

We all seem to collect tons of small pieces of Precision Board when we do lots of routing. The perfect use of these small pieces is display samples.  We are in the process of designing a very fun project for one of our theme park customers. We were asked to design up some small kiosks to be used for face painting, food carts and a character meet and greet. Since the theme is mechanical circus we decided the perfect theme for the kiosks was a circus train

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Posts with a theme

We used a heart motif as a theme on our house. Little hearts are routed into all of the outside trim. We created hundreds of files and then machined even more pieces. These were all painted up and gazed to form a one of a kind house which we really enjoy. This same theme extends out to the fence posts as well

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Last load to NEB’s

It has been well over a year since we did the first concept art for NEB’s Fun World. The massive bowling alley was the first project to be green lighted for construction. We designed hundreds of  files using EnRoute.  Our MultiCam Plasma cutter got quite a workout as we cut scores of sheets of plate steel into pieces for the bases and tops of the posts as well as countless bolting plates, lifting lugs and braces

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Signs should be creative and fun!

As I look at the signs for developments it makes me wonder why there aren’t more creative and fun ideas used. The sign industry is chock full of people who insist they are creative and yet most of the signs are far from it. We take a far different tack as we design developments. Imagine of we could use creativity at every turn – literally. Why do trees signs have to be a boring rectangular flat piece of metal with some boring type stuck on them

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Making the replacement

When I went back to measure up the signs I also had to figure out how I built them. After seven years my memories of the project had gotten very fuzzy. The photos I had of the signs in the trailer provided some information but the colours were redder than I remembered.  Once I got onsite I recalled things much more clearly. I had cut the signs from 1.5″ thick 30 lb Precision Board.

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Seven years and doing well

Almost seven years ago we designed and fabricated the signs for an exclusive subdivision. The theme was of Japanese origin. At the entrance we built two large rocks with the subdivision name – OYAMA ESTATES. Each of the lots also received their own smaller sign which had some positive attribute Japanese symbol and a house number attached

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