Buster gets some paint

Im my last post about the Could Buster sign I had finished the sculpt and he was waiting for paint. As with many f our signs we started with a cot of Coastal Enterprises FSC-88 WB primer. It's a heavy bodied water base primer that is sandal. Only our intention is not to smooth things out but instead add even more texture. This paint is the perfect ticket for that task. We brush it on, purposely leaving brush stroked behind. Later when we do the glazing those brush strokes make that task easier. Hand brushing our primer and paints gives our signs a definite hand crafted character. That adds value.

We started the painting process with three base coats of solid colour. We use premium acrylic house paint. We allow the paint to dry thoroughly between coats and a large industrial fan speeds up this process. With the paint dry it is time for the glazes. We start with the lightest colour, in this case a light tan. The glaze is brushed on and then wiped off, leaving it in the crevices and ridges. 

The next coloured glaze would be a dark brown and would go over the 'wooden' gun stock as well as the porcupine. This meant we had to brush the base colour on the gunstock before the next glaze. 

By doing things in a specific order it cuts down on the time for cutting the edges of the painted areas.

Becke also painted the base colours on the barrel of the gun, eyeballs and nose of the little creature.

She then worked quickly over the entire surface, always keeping a wet line in her glaze and wiping it off before it dried.

The back of the porcupine received the same treatment as the front. Not many people will look here but if they do it is finished as good as the front.

Next the blues of the bottom will get their final coats and then the lettering is last. I'll show the finished sign next time. Stay tuned...

Quick installation

I love it when installations are painless and quick - just as we plan. The four signs for the Cultus Lake Boardwalk fell into this category. To install we measured thing up and marked the beams, then walked the signs up two ladders, positioned then and bolted them into place with lag bolts. It took less than five minutes per sign to do the installation.

The signs added a dash of colour like decorative icing on a fine cake.

Paint, paint, paint!

The four signs for the Cultus Lake Boardwalk are now nearing completion. Each colour of the sign gets a minimum of three coats of paint to ensure a long life and fade resistance. That's a lot of cutting of the many colours! 

The ribbit ride sign now only needs one more blend coat of yellow paint on the lettering plus some eyeball details before it is declared done.

The three Cultus Lake Boardwalk signs need two more coats of blending on the letters plus three coats of white on the borders. Hopefully tomorrow has enough hours to get the job done. In any case by week's end we'll be bolting them into place up at the park.

Boardwalk signs assembled

Today, I dusted off the pieces for the Cultus Lake Boardwalk and then began their assembly. There were four pieces for each of the three signs. I laid the sign fronts face down on the work table, then the centres. I then places the plasma cut toppers into place and welded on the steel tubing which would protrude out the back of the sign. I then spread a thin layer of PB Bond 240 glue onto the face and added the middle layer of the sign. I screwed it into place and then positioned the steel topper. I spread the one part Coastal Enterprises glue on this layer and spritzed with a mist of water. The wood grained textured back panels were then laid on top and screwed into place. 

We then lifted the sign and positioned it on a temporary stand where it was welded into place. We'll do the final finishing and painting on this stand. Once that is done we'll cut the steel tubes and weld them to the angle iron bracket before delivery. 

Ribbit - part two

Today I used the plasma cutter to cut a fancy bracket plate for the Ribbit sign. Sone 1" x 2" square tubing goes from this plate into the middle layer of the sign. A 5/8" steel rod is welded to the top and bottom of this tubing and they protrude out the top to hold up the frog and through the bottom to weld onto a curved piece of tubing which acts as a reinforcement to make the bracket even stronger. One never knows when some tough guy might decide to do a chin up on the sign.

Once the glue had dried I welded up a 1/4" pencil rod armature for the frog sculpt.

Then I used some Abracadabra Sculpting epoxy to work up the rough shape of the frog. Tomorrow I'll do a second layer with all of the detailed work.

Ribbit - part one

The new ride up at Cultus Lake this year is called the ribbit. It had giant frogs that kids ride in as they bounce around in a circle. To create the sign I started with a quick sketch of the casual styled lettering. I vectorized the lettering by hand tracing it in PhotoShop.

These vectors were imported into Enroute. I created a rectangle around the lettering which was slightly bigger than the final size of the sign we would create.

I created a flat ref with the rectangle.

I then used a bitmap from the Woodgrain texture collection to create the woodgrain.

Once the relief had woodgrain I rendered the relief and then used this image to create the final shape of the board so it followed the woodgrain and looked broken on the ends. I used these new vectors to create a zero height relief.

I then merged highest, first selecting the ragged edged relief and followed by the first rectangular relief. This in effect cut the board to the new shape.

I then duplicated the relief to make an identical board for the back side of the sign.

I then created a new relief using the lettering border vectors. These were then merged highest with the board background relief. 

The last step was to modify the relief by adding the lettering.

I then duplicated the front relief and deleted the reliefs leaving only the outline vector. I built a vector rectangle which was slightly larger than the structural steel I would laminate into the centre of the sign. I used the jigsaw tool to subtract this shape from the sign. This new vector was used to cut out the centre piece for the sign.

Cultus Lake Boardwalk signs - part one

We've done a lot of work for Cultus Lake Adventure park and we've built up a trust through the years. This meant that no concept drawing was required. We simply described the concept to them and a budget. Our client said GO!

The design would feature a cut out of five of the rides in the park. This would be cut from 1/8" thick steel plate to form a topper for the sign. The sign itself would match a bunch of the other signs we did for them in years past.

I did the drawing of the rides in Photoshop as a simple black and white, keeping in mind that it would be plasma cut from steel plate. I nested the rides so they read well but were still interlocked to be stronger.

This bitmap drawing was imported into EnRoute. It vectorized the drawing in a fraction of a second. The vector file was good enough to use without modification.  The rest of the vector file was built in EnRoute. The sign would be routed from three layers of 30 lb Precision Board. The front face was cut from 1.5" thick HDU. The middle section would be half inch thick Precision Board with some wide slots cut into it to accept the blades of the plasma cut steel topper. The back would be routed from 1" thick board. The topper steel had large tabs which would provide the structural steel for the sign. We would weld steel tubing off these tabs to create a mounting bracket for the sign.

I first created a flat relief in the shape of the sign. 

I then imported one f the woodgrain bitmaps ( http://www.imaginationcorporation.com/textures/ ) I selected the flat relief, the border of the outer relief and a outside vector. The outside vector reversed the area to be wood grained making it happen outside the lettering area. I applied a value of .25" to the bitmap which made for a dramatic effect.

I decided to build the lettering and borders as a separate relief although I could have instead modified the board relief. I started with the outside boarder as the base relief, then raised each successive layer. 

Then I raised the layers themselves.

The last step was to indent the insides of the letters leaving a raised border around the letters. This was done by subtracting from the relief.

I then used the merged highest function to combine the two reliefs.

I then created the bottom long rounded panel as a separate relief. 

The panel was then combined with the board relief.

The last step for this piece was to add the raised boardwalk lettering.

The back of the sign was created as a separate relief, starting with a flat relief. The vector had first been flipped so the shape matched the front.

I used a different woodgrain for the back. 

2016 TEA Award Nomination Video

We are pleased to announce that Cultus Lake Adventure Park has been nominated for a THEA award via the Themed Entertainment Association. We had to submit photos and a video to support the nomination and here's the video. It shows the park at it's best. There are many nominations for this prestigious award and it will be some time before we find out the results.

Pictures of the finished park - part three

Today I have a last load of pictures of the Cultus Lake Adventure Park. The signs on the western side of the building have been featured here before as they went through various stages of construction. They were designed in EnRoute and then routed from Precision Board on our Multicam router. The building itself was built by the owner but we did the entire exterior treatment using sculpted fiberglass reinforced concrete. We painted using the same techniques we used on most of our other projects using base colors and them glazes to highlight the textures we love.

 featured the saloon sign last time but now finally have a nice shot of the entire building.

Now we are back in our shop getting ready for the next large project. First we took everything down from the walls and cleaned everything off. The entire shop got a fresh coat of paint and the samples were culled and then will get put back up on the walls for display. 

We are also landscaping the yard from one end to the other and even paving the driveway at last. By month's end we will be ready to get back to work once more. We have more than fourteen months worth of fabulous projects on the drawing board. 

Stay tuned for some pretty fun stuff...

-dan