WELCOME!

It is hard to believe that it was almost ten years ago I witnessed a CNC router in action for the very first time. I was fascinated and simply had to have one! Although I had been in the creative end of the three dimensional sign business for most of my life I didn't really know what I would do with one of these machines - but I just knew it could do fantastic stuff.

Along with the CNC router I discovered the wonderful material called Precision Board and the glues, primers and other companion products they offer. Since then we have gone through many tons of the material using it in most signs and projects we tackle. This journal will chronicle our many adventures both past, present and future. I'll talk from the perspective of someone who pushes these products to the creative limit on a daily basis. I'll be adding to the stories two or three times each week. -dan

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Making it look hand carved.

 The next phase of the bugle beer sign is to sculpt the scroll. While much of the work on our signs is done on a computerized machine I don't want them to appear that way. I just want the machine to do the bulk of the grunt work for me. 


The air powered die grinder with a large cone bit makes an awesome carving tool.  Once again I am using the most efficient way I can to create our signs. It only took about ten minutes to add a texture to the face of the scroll and to round the ends to shape in a gentle curve. The tool marks are left in place, making the sign look as if it were hand carved with old fashioned chisels.


Then the scroll received a quick coat of primer similar to the one I described in my last post. Once this had been under the fan a couple of hours I applied a base coat of white to the bulk of the sign. The scroll received a blending of three shades of cream/tan. All paint was acrylic house paint.



Then using the sharp raised edges to assist me the base colors were added to the sign. The blue is a metallic acrylic from Modern Masters.


The raised border and 'BEER' lettering also got a coat of the blue metallic paint. 


The last stage of the background painting was to add a glaze to the borders to make everything jump nicely. I used our the custom glaze we call plumb crazy - a mix of clear base with black, chocolate and metallic cherry red.


Now I'll let this cure up good before I add the gold. The bugle will be sculpted and added as a last step.

Stay tuned...

-dan