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We allow four to six weeks to produce a dimensional sign in our shop. The design and approval process generally take one or two weeks. Once the drawing has been signed off on, we order the inventory. In this case we needed to order the redwood panel, which is subbed out to a local wood-specialist company to laminate to size. The
3-D elements are be made with HDU and Sintra, which are part of our standard inventory. Our budget no longer allowed for gold leaf lettering, so on the advice of Rhino Paint Company, aka Gary Anderson, we decided to try Ronan’s metallic gold water based paint as our faux gold.

We have a Gerber Sabre 408 router set up in the woodworking area of our shop. The redwood panel is placed on the router bed to have the oval shape cut out, and then the face of the board is covered with sandblast stencil. Thanks to Mike Sheehan, Jay Allen, and Dan Baronian, we can finally throw away our Xacto knives and give our carpel tunnel time to heal. The stencil cuts fabulously using a .015 profiler engraving bit, and it shaves a good hour off of the production time for a sign this size. The sign is blasted and sanded, and then is moved into the finishing area of the shop where it is primed and painted with flat acrylic latex paints.

The dimensional letters are prismatic carved on the router using ½” Sintra. The golf bag and bucket of balls are made from 1 ½” SignFoam. The clubs silhouette is cut out of ½” Sintra and has Signfoam laminated to it for shaping the ends.

First things first, an extra layer of Signfoam is laminated on the golf bag profile to bring the bucket of balls to the forefront of the composition. I believe that the girls use Girilla Glue for laminating urethane foam. Then the shaping begins. Noella roughs out the contours of the bag using a hand grinder. For detailing, she uses all kinds of files, sandpaper and a NSK electric rotary carver with various bits.

When the carving is completed, the pieces are primed with latex paint and top-coated with enamel. We choose to use enamel because of the great contrast it gives against a flat finish. Noella carefully prepares her pallet to include all the right colours needed to blend the antique bag. One Shot lettering enamel is still our first choice in paint for pictorials. As for brushes, you can see that Noella uses a variety of different bristles for specific rendering tasks. That’s really all I know about that.

And now comes the assembly. We usually get to this stage of the game and note that Noella has had sleepless nights figuring out how to accomplish this task. When we attach 3-D elements there are important factors to consider: 1) expansion rates of various materials, 2) security, as in how close can the public get to the sign, and 3) weight of the assembled sign and/or packing and shipping considerations. In this case, the materials we’ve used have been tried and tested so we will stick to the status quo. The sign will be installed on a brick wall away from the path that leads golfers through to the tees, and the sign will be well lit, so we’re not worried about vandalism. The weight of the dimensional components is minimal, so using our conventional laminating methods will work.

The prismatic letters are glued with Formuflex glue, a product of State Chemical Co. The bag is smeared with the same adhesive a pressed onto small finishing nails that have been hammered onto the panel and snipped. We then place sandbags on the pieces for a few hours to ensure good contact while the glue sets.

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