Kids & Critters

Our driveway is a long one and presents the temptation to race down it to the shop at the back of the property. We needed a sign to grab folks attention and slow them down! Dan did up a quick sketch, then set to work making it happen.

The sign features a chicken sculpted in epoxy. First, Dan welded a steel armature. Then he pressed a ball of tinfoil into the middle if the armature to bulk it out a little before he started sculpting. He sculpted the form of the bird, then add feathers, one at a time.

The next step was to create the routing file for the sign in EnRoute. Dan used his custom cartoon font. The woodgrain bitmap texture was from our Texture Magic: Classic Collection. The back panel for the sign was a flipped version of the front, without the lettering. The front and back of the sign were routed from 1.5" thick 30 lbs. Precision Board HDU.

The centre piece of the sign was made with a piece of 1" thick material. Dan routed a 'T' shaped hole in this piece to accommodate a steel structure.

Dan drilled two holes from the top and pushed the extra long chicken leg armature through it, then welded them to the steel 'T'. Two heavy steel rods also pushed through holes in the back panel and then welded to the 'T' with the back panel in place. This structure was then welded to a larger armature which would form the basis for the 'tree' that would hold up the sign with the chicken perched on it.

The sign still has plenty of work to be done before it is finished, but it is well on its way.

Name Tag 006: Ryan

Ryan hails from a seaside town so his Workshop name plaque will resemble the driftwood. Dan typeset his name in a jagged 'pirate' style font, then created a bevelled relief with the vectors. He surrounded the lettering with a small flat shoulder to separate it from the woodgrain behind it. Then he imported the driftwood texture bitmap from our Texture Magic: Classic Collection and drew a rough and jagged outline by tracing a vector around the bitmap.

Dan used this vector to create a relief and used the dome setting with a 7 degree angle. Then the texture bitmap was applied to this relief with a value of 0.3" — this made for a deep, gnarly woodgrain. He then drew an oval about the same size and modified the lettering relief to dome the lettering to match the 'wood' panel.

Here's a side view screen capture to show how the lettering and the panel ark together nicely.

Then it was time to modify the panel using EnRoute's freehand sculpting tool. Dan used it to sculpt some deeper creases into the panel. The red arrows show the areas and direction he applied the sculpting strokes.

In this final screen capture, you can see how dramatically those few sculpting strokes have affected this panel. Instead of a flat chunk of Precision Board HDU with a woodgrain pasted on it, we have a believable piece of driftwood.

Name Tag 005: Gary

Gary's Workshop panel features a classic 'gold rush' design. Dan dug out a decorative element from the David Butler’s Gold Collection and used parts of it in the design. The lettering also has that same gold rush feel.

The letting would be deeply bevelled with some 'sandblasted' woodgrain behind. Dan used a woodgrain texture bitmap from our Texture Magic: Classic Collection to achieve this look. The file was much larger than needed (as often happens). The area in the dotted red lines was the tiny portion used for this project.

The panel looks complex but is actually quite simple. Once Dan had all the relief elements created positioned vertically to his satisfaction he merged everything together to make the final relief.

The resulting relief was tool pathed using a 3/8" ball nose bit to rough it our and a 1/8" ball nose bit for the final pass. Then it was sent to be routed.