Search results

It has long been my view that advertising in the magazines, newspapers and TV is best done as editorial. I don't read many ads and I suspect most other folks are the same. We will purposely do more work on select projects to create eye candy that is newsworthy. If we are doing a big lift...

Consistently good - as always. Thanks for sharing! -grampa dan

The key is how I design our routing files with layers and lots of texture. The texture allows us to paint a base color on with acrylic paints... pretty basic stuff anybody could do. Then we apply a couple (or more) layers of glazing, semi transparent paint which we wipe off (mostly) with a...

Unless the sign is very large I prefer to route the letters from the same piece of material as the background. There are no failures this way. We've figured out ways to make painting even easier than doing them separately. I'll post a picture of the sign when it is done. -grampa dan -grampa dan

Thanks for the kind comments. The sculpting epoxy can be sanded and machined although it is very hard when dry. Sculpting is best learned by simply doing. The more you do the better you get. The sculpting epoxy does have a bit of a learning curve as it tends to want to do what it does and you...

The other side of the sign will be pretty much the same - or as much as I can. The signs are durable and should last many years. -grampa dan

Depending on what we are building we use a variety of methods. Generally on bigger stuff (this project was small) I weld up a metal armature of pencil rod attached to structural steel, then expanded lath and thin rough coat of sculpt. Then we apply a final coat (a small area at a time) and put...

In our shop we only do bigger projects. I like to do my math at the start of a project - not all the way through. Pricing (through much experience) is done in a shoot from the hip kind of fashion. We've never tracked our projects, even when I had a crew of more than twenty. The labor costs...

Sculpting epoxy is best equated to working with plasticene - except this gets hard in about 3 hours - rock hard overnight. Mixing the two parts together is as big a deal as sculpting. I use students to help me out with that and either of the two ladies (one is 16 and one is 20) mixes about the...

My daughter refers to it as the mad cow sign... :) -grampa dan

Here's a fun project currently underway in our shop. The double sided sign measures 4' x 4' x 4' deep. It's routed from 30 lb Precision Board with a welded steel frame inside. The bull's head is sculpted by hand using Abracadabra Sculpting epoxy. -dan

Can't win them all. :smile: I probably should just sit quiet but I couldn't resist. One of these days I'd really like to sit down with Stevo, buy him a coca cola maybe or a beer if that is what he prefers and have a nice long chat. I'll bet once we sat down to talk, face to face, we could be...

I live in a wonderful town. I believe its one of the better towns around. But in the last weeks I have been disturbed by what I see in the paper - especially on the front page. Without fail, the pages are full of bad things, drug busts, shootings, murder, accusations of wrongdoing and such...

I look forward to every issue of SignCraft arriving in the mail. There are old dog eared copies of the magazine on my shelf that go back to the early 80's - the first ones I found when I was in my twenties. I learned so much each time I read a magazine. It was an article by Mike Jackson that...

This sounds like a piece of cake for us. If possible I would like a vector file if it is available - or else the customer would have to pay us to create one from scratch. Creating dimensional projects is all we do. -dan

We are all too busy these days it seems. Blogging is important to me and my business. Blogging drives repeat business to the website which shows nothing but our very best work. It shows only the type of work we want to do in the future. Blogging on our site is done to educate our customers...

I often get asked just how it is we manage to sell the dimensional signs we do. The answer is simple. Build it and they will come. People have to see what you can do before they will ask for it. I am a HUGE believer in investing in samples for our own showroom. Those who have visited our shop...

A was visited by a fellow from Ontario last week. He was on vacation visiting family in the city. He had been an industrial designer, but with the decline in the economy he had changed to landscape design. He loved what he saw in my shop and not so quietly wished he could do something similar...

I am well aware that books (and the money made) are as good as their promotion. A hard bound paper book is very expensive to produce. Without a publisher or a BIG wad of cash impossible. Even then there are distributors and retailers as well. The end result is a single digit 3-8% return for the...

Thanks for the information and encouragement already shown. The book will be primarily for self promotion. As for the contents of the book.... It's a combination of things including my own story (primarily to show I'm really not very different from anyone else) The book will cover many...