Sawatzky Guest Blog: A Hazelnut Inn Update

Coastal Enterprises, manufacturers of Precision Board HDU, is proud to announce a series of guest blogs written by Dan Sawatzky of Imagination Corporation, which will be posted on the Precision Board Blog each month. This month Dan Sawatzky gives us an update on his passion project – The Hazelnut Inn, and points out all the different places that PBLT-30 Precision Board HDU is used to make this themed bed & breakfast look so fantastical!

In Dan’s own words…

Many of our projects are very large and it is not unusual for them to be in our shop for a year or more before they are installed and complete. The Hazelnut Inn is a personal project and has to fit around our customer’s projects. It is also very large and the most detailed we have ever taken, so it will take a long time to complete. We’ve been at it four years so far and it will be at least another year before the first suite is open to guests. But we are making great progress and it is looking spectacular!

While much of the project is fabricated using hand sculpted fibreglass reinforced concrete, we are also using a lot of Precision Board HDU where it is applicable.

From the road things are looking pretty colourful. The building certainly catches everyone’s eye as they drive by!

We used precision Board on many of the details including the roof caps, finales and the primary sign in this picture.

The stature of our heroine is also sculpted from 30 lb Precision Board.

hazelnut inn

The North Star suite is the most complete thus far. It is the unit closest and most visible from the road. We are currently doing the sculpting of the lower section where guests will enter the garden. The North Star sign was fabricated almost four years ago (one of the first projects while we were waiting for our building permit).  We finally installed it on the rudder of the ship in the last couple of weeks.

Adjacent to the North Star entry is the maintenance room for the Inn. This area is where the cleaning supplies, storage and laundry will be for the staff. It is probably the fanciest entry to a staff area in the whole world!

The faux shutters are fabricated from PBLT-30 Precision Board HDU to match the adjacent wood doors.

hazelnut inn

Adjacent to the service area is the Under Hill suite. We are now beginning the theme work on this area. It will have a private 600 square foot garden in front of the unit. The hand crafted gate is soon to be installed.

Today we did the faux brick work around the pocket in the wall which allowed us to install the Under Hill sign at last!

hazelnut inn

While we were at it we installed the Copper Crown sign on the castle suite. It won’t be until later this summer that we do the theme work on this portion of the building.

Inside the building, the North star suite is further along. Inside the ship the sleeping area is almost complete. The headboard, figureheads and clamshell light fixtures are all 30 lb Precision Board.

hazelnut inn

There are many other prefabricated pieces already finished, tucked away for safekeeping for now. As we get into more finishing we will be using more 30 lb Precision Board for fabrication as it is easy to work and holds detail extremely well.

I’ll provide another update on The Hazelnut Inn as we get a little further along. Stay tuned…

Sawatzky’s Imagination Corporation is a small family company that specializes in the design and creation of dimensional signs and environments. They tackle projects of any size from small signs to entire theme parks. Their work has garnered numerous national and international awards.

Dan Sawatzky is best described as a creative force and visual storyteller extraordinaire. His art career spans almost fifty years of magic. Dan’s passion is to design and create imaginative places that take people from the normal world to a setting of delight and wonder.

Coastal Enterprises manufactures Precision Board HDU, a versatile, cost-effective and eco-friendly urethane sign material that is particularly effective for making professional-looking indoor and outdoor dimensional signs.  It is a closed-cell rigid substrate that does not rot, warp or crack.  You can request free samples, get a quote or sign up for periodic newsletters packed with helpful information.

Rotary CNC Routing of Precision Board Faux Statues

Coastal Enterprises, manufacturers of Precision Board HDU, is proud to announce a series of guest blogs written by Dan Sawatzky of Imagination Corporation, which will be posted on the Precision Board Blog each month. This month Dan Sawatzky shows us how he used their rotary CNC machine to route some faux statues from Precision Board HDU and walks us through making adjustments to get the best final product.  These statues will be part of the themed decorations at The Hazelnut Inn next door to Imagination Corporation’s studio.

In Dan’s own words…

We’ve had our rotary CNC MultiCam router since late in 2013. When we first took delivery of the wonderful machine we did a few projects with it but the task of programming the machine was cumbersome (for me) because it involved writing some G-code to run on the router. It was much too complex for my artistic brain – especially since I only used it occasionally. After those first few test projects the router hasn’t been used.

Thankfully, since that time, the good folks at EnRoute software have made things a whole lot simpler. Our good friend Jeff Hartman, one of the program’s authors, came up for our last workshop a couple of weeks ago and stayed afterwards for a couple of days for some one-on-one training with the new and improved software. By the time he left we felt confident we could put our rotary CNC to good use.

Being Sawatzkys, we jumped right into the deep end, of course. Peter has been itching to start work on the two ship figureheads that are to be mounted over the bed in the North Star suite of the Hazelnut Inn. He downloaded a customized STL file of a figure which would be the starting point for the figureheads. Two mirror images will be created, and once he adds the final details, they will be differently-clothed sisters.

Peter laminated up two massive blocks of PBLT-30 Precision Board, two feet in diameter and five feet long. It took the considerable effort of four of our crew to lug the blocks into the router room and chuck them into the router. Then it was the moment of truth…

We knew we would have a significant learning curve with this project and so we kept a careful eye on the process, pausing the router to make adjustments by hand as needed. The block was first routed into a perfectly round cylinder, then the actual routing process began – ten passes of one inch each. The first three passes were flawless… and then that pesky ‘CONE OF DEATH’ reared its head. This ‘cone of death’ is determined by the length of the bit and the size of the collet. We were using as long a bit as we possibly could, but because the block was close to the gantry we couldn’t use anything longer. To remedy the situation we brought out the disc sander and air power die grinder. As the collet approached the material we would remove as much as we needed to continue, knowing we would have to add it back in by hand later with sculpting epoxy. Most of the material we removed was towards the rear of the figure which will not be a problem.

The first figure turned out great (for a first effort), but while the machine ran we figured out some quick solutions. As Peter prepared the second mirrored figure he made a few modifications in the EnRoute software. He added some mesh ‘balloons’ to fill the problem areas, primarily between the arms and body as well as between the legs. These areas will be covered with clothing when he hand sculpts in any case. We also increased the size of the bit and decreased the overlap on the rough passes. This cut our routing time substantially. The second figure routing went immeasurably better and we only had to remove a touch of material using the hand grinder to make room for the collet. The finish pass cleaned things up nicely.

rotary cnc

On the second figure we were also relaxed enough to grab some video for the blog. We hope you find it as exciting as we did.

 

The figure on the left is the first one and the grinding efforts to remove material to make room for the CNC collet are visible on the backs of the arms and hips. These areas will be filled in later by hand using sculpting epoxy. The second figure after digital modification needed almost no hand adjusting. Both figures will receive a thin layer of sculpting epoxy to add details, woodgrain and clothing to make them look like weathered, hand rotary-crafted figureheads of old.

You can bet we are busy dreaming up more projects to rout using this exciting rotary CNC tool!

rotary cnc

Sawatzky’s Imagination Corporation is a small family company that specializes in the design and creation of dimensional signs and environments. They tackle projects of any size from small signs to entire theme parks. Their work has garnered numerous national and international awards.

Dan Sawatzky is best described as a creative force and visual storyteller extraordinaire. His art career spans almost fifty years of magic. Dan’s passion is to design and create imaginative places that take people from the normal world to a setting of delight and wonder.

Coastal Enterprises manufactures Precision Board HDU, a versatile, cost-effective and eco-friendly urethane sign material that is particularly effective for making professional-looking indoor and outdoor dimensional signs.  It is a closed-cell rigid substrate that does not rot, warp or crack.  You can request free samples, get a quote or sign up for periodic newsletters packed with helpful information.

Hazelnut Inn Sign – A Mix of Materials and Techniques

Coastal Enterprises, manufacturers of Precision Board HDU, is proud to host guest blogs written by some of the signage industry’s biggest movers and shakers, posted to the Precision Board Blog.  This guest blog is written by Dan Sawatzky with Imagination Corporation in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada.  This month, Dan is showing us how he used a variety of materials, including Precision Board, and different techniques to fabricate the main sign for the Hazelnut Inn.  He also talks a bit about how the design changed during the building process and why.

hazelnut inn

In Dan Sawatzky’s own words…

They say your own sign is the hardest to design and fabricate. It’s true. It took multiple tries before we were satisfied with the design for the Hazelnut Inn. I purposely didn’t worry about colour at this point for I knew things would change as we went. The only thing we were sure about was that the lettering would be 23K gold and the letters would be prismatic.

In the end we settled on shades of brown for the backgrounds. The leaves would be made of plasma cut sheet steel. There were more than a thousand of them in all. I kept adding until it looked perfect. The dished oval background was cut from a piece of 4” thick PBLT-30 Precision Board HDU. A stylized leaf pattern was routed into the background.

The tree trunk and branches as well as the small rocks below were hand sculpted using sculpting epoxy over a metal armature.

hazelnut inn

We sprayed the leaves with a mild acid to encourage a rusty patina. Once it had fully developed we lightly sanded it and then clear coated the leaves. The tree trunk and backgrounds were hand painted with acrylic paints.

hazelnut inn

A base for the sign was welded up over a sturdy block foundation and concrete footer. Metal lath was then attached to the armature in preparation for the hand sculpted concrete.

We then troweled on a thick coat of fiberglass-reinforced concrete and allowed it to partially cure. This was then hand-sculpted to look like brick and rock. In keeping with the Inn story, it couldn’t be perfectly straight and level. Instead, the lines were playful and fun. The two metal brackets are to attach the lettering once the dirty work was complete.

hazelnut inn

Once the sculpted concrete work had cured, the painting process began, first with base coats and then a series of glazes to bring out the textures. The colours, textures and simulated materials perfectly matched the architecture of the Hazelnut Inn around it.

As we worked up the colours we also changed the colours on the background and tree of the sign to make every element work together.  As soon as the rest of the work is complete on the retaining walls we will begin the landscape. You can bet we will pay just as much attention to detail to ensure everything goes together flawlessly.

Sawatzky’s Imagination Corporation is a small family company that specializes in the design and creation of dimensional signs and environments. They tackle projects of any size from small signs to entire theme parks. Their work has garnered numerous national and international awards.

Dan Sawatzky is best described as a creative force and visual storyteller extraordinaire. His art career spans almost fifty years of magic. Dan’s passion is to design and create imaginative places that take people from the normal world to a setting of delight and wonder.

Coastal Enterprises manufactures Precision Board HDU, a versatile, cost-effective and eco-friendly urethane sign material that is particularly effective for making professional-looking indoor and outdoor dimensional signs.  It is a closed-cell rigid substrate that does not rot, warp or crack.  You can request free samples, get a quote or sign up for periodic newsletters packed with helpful information.

Creating Faux Stone Artifacts with Precision Board HDU

Coastal Enterprises, manufacturers of Precision Board HDU, is proud to host guest blogs written by some of the signage industry’s biggest movers and shakers, posted to the Precision Board Blog.  This guest blog is written by Dan Sawatzky with Imagination Corporation in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada.  This month, Dan tells us how he used PBLT-30 Precision Board HDU to create ‘artifacts’ (in this case, faux stone statues) for the North Star suite of the Hazelnut Inn.

artifacts

In Dan’s own words…

The website of the Hazelnut Inn describes the North Star Suite thus…

Local lore holds that the North Star was once the home of Temperance Longbottom. An eccentric explorer, Ms. Longbottom gathered artifacts and curiosities from every mythical corner of the world and built her estate around them.  Spend the night in the captain’s quarters of an ancient sailing vessel. Relax in a tub for two. Curl up by the fireplace. Explore the lush private garden, filled with whimsical artifacts. Staying in the North Star is simply a delight.

With this legend in mind we are busy creating the many ‘artifacts’ to be housed there. Two statues are among this collection and they are in construction currently in our studio. We decided the perfect medium would be PBLT-30 Precision Board HDU. For the basic shape Peter downloaded two 3D models from the web. These were imported into EnRoute and sliced into sections two inches thick. The two statue slices filled two full sheets of Precision Board. Since we planned on doing the bulk of the modeling ourselves, and in the process modify the statues considerably, we used a 3/8” bullnose bit with a 50{afbea94bd31582343c3017644f03ec8d7d8fa2386ecb82c250661e06c0c6e111} overlap. The reliefs were pretty rough and basic but provided exactly what we needed.

These slices were then glued up using PB Fast Set. A steel frame was embedded with two heavy duty threaded steel rods protruding out of the back. These will go through the exterior of the wall to be securely bolted to the interior framework of the building. We used plenty of course threaded screws as we assembled the Precision Board, countersunk to hold the material in place while we finished the piece. After using some sculpting epoxy to fill screw holes and apply other details, Peter used a die grinder to surface and shape the model. Some portions of the statue needed to appear broken, and by using a chisel and brute force, Peter did just that. The result was very convincing!

artifacts

The first statue is now in the painting stage with base coats applied and already looks pretty fabulous! By the time we finish the paint it will be impossible to tell from a real stone statue.

Sawatzky’s Imagination Corporation is a small family company that specializes in the design and creation of dimensional signs and environments. They tackle projects of any size from small signs to entire theme parks. Their work has garnered numerous national and international awards.

Dan Sawatzky is best described as a creative force and visual storyteller extraordinaire. His art career spans almost fifty years of magic. Dan’s passion is to design and create imaginative places that take people from the normal world to a setting of delight and wonder.

Coastal Enterprises manufactures Precision Board HDU, a versatile, cost-effective and eco-friendly urethane sign material that is particularly effective for making professional-looking indoor and outdoor dimensional signs.  It is a closed-cell rigid substrate that does not rot, warp or crack.  You can request free samples, get a quote or sign up for periodic newsletters packed with helpful information.

Adding Pizzazz to the Hazelnut Inn Window Trim!

Coastal Enterprises, manufacturers of Precision Board HDU, is proud to host a series of guest blogs written by Dan Sawatzky of Imagination Corporation, posted to the Precision Board Blog on a monthly basis.  This month Dan Sawatzky tells us how he uses 30lb Precision Board HDU to add fine detail to interior or exterior trim on windows (and have some fun while he’s at it!).  His current project is spicing up the trim on some of the windows for the Hazelnut Inn, currently under construction.

trim

In Dan Sawatzky’s own words…

We are making great progress on the Hazelnut Inn project. The carpenters have now finished the concrete work and wood framing and the last of the roof shingles are in progress. That means we can really start to get to business with the detail work at last.

When it comes time for fine detail on interior or exterior trim our first choice is most often 30 lb Precision Board. A current project is a good example. The windows of the Copper Crown suite need to be fancy. It is a castle after all. We looked at many options including rounding the tops of the windows… but after a lot of consideration opted for rectangle windows with lead work between the panes. Above them we would install custom routed panels made from 30 lb Precision Board, of course. There are four windows in the tower which will perch above the master bedroom of the castle and reach a little more than forty feet vertically. Each window transom will sport the initials of a member of Peter and Hailey’s family. It’s a detail that will most likely get seldom noticed but it will be there for those who really look things over.

trim trim trim

The routing files were created in EnRoute and the outer profile matches the edges of the windows. There are four rounded panels on this tower which will bear the initials of Peter, Hailey, Juniper and Henry.  The Precision Board was routed on our MultiCam CNC machine.

The tower is being prefabricated in our studio/shop. The framework is welded steel and will be coated with fiberglass reinforced concrete. We’ll then have the inside sprayed with foam for insulation and then we’ll plaster the inside walls and paint. It will be lifted into place as a finished piece, along with the tower roof, complete with shingles.

 

We’ll be creating hundreds of detail pieces through the three suites of the Hazelnut Inn over the next year or so… all in the interest of making a unique boutique hotel quite unlike anything else in the world. Stay tuned…

trim

Sawatzky’s Imagination Corporation is a small family company that specializes in the design and creation of dimensional signs and environments. They tackle projects of any size from small signs to entire theme parks. Their work has garnered numerous national and international awards.

Dan Sawatzky is best described as a creative force and visual storyteller extraordinaire. His art career spans almost fifty years of magic. Dan’s passion is to design and create imaginative places that take people from the normal world to a setting of delight and wonder.

Dan has been sharing his progress on the Hazelnut Inn for some time now.  You can read previous blogs below and stay tuned for more updates in the future as this project comes to life, bit by bit!

Dan & Peter Sawatzky’s Fantastical Hazelnut Inn Signs

Making the Hazelnut Inn Model with Precision Board HDU

Building Curved Shapes with Precision Board HDU

Coastal Enterprises manufactures Precision Board HDU, a versatile, cost-effective and eco-friendly urethane sign material that is particularly effective for making professional-looking indoor and outdoor dimensional signs.  It is a closed-cell rigid substrate that does not rot, warp or crack.  You can request free samples, get a quote or sign up for periodic newsletters packed with helpful information.