Anyone who knows me well knows two things about me. I love to tease and I LOVE a friendly competition... the fiercer the better!
Back when we bought our new CNC router a few of my sign making friends bought similar machines - all different brands of course. Immediately the jousting started as to which machine was better and which represented the best value. Out of that rhetoric came a challenge to produce work on the machines and post it for all to see. ROUTER WARS was born. The first sign pictured above was not a misspelling.. for one of my fiercest competitors was a friend named Steve Greer... hence the sign DAN - GREER!
Each of us was new to the routing world and our creative efforts were dampened by the complex, steep learning curve of the software. But as we worked in our respective shops on different corners of the continent we continually broke new ground. Some pretty amazing work was done in the process. Each time someone posted a picture of the new work the bar was raised continually higher. The end result was that all who participated or watched the silly game of ROUTER WARS learned from each other in the process. No matter how fierce the ‘fighting’ seemed to outsiders we remained good friends and even shared files and techniques during the ‘bitter’ feud.
Last October two of the ROUTER WARS participants attended our Sign Magic Workshop along with many of my other long term heroes in the sign business. I pulled out the stops when I made he name plaques for the attendees of course - it was but another round in the crazy ROUTER WARS.
One of the plaques was for Raymond Chapman. My good friend Raymond lives in Texas. I affectionately dubbed his (much smaller) router ‘the pea shooter’. His plaque shows a pea shooter tied to a cactus faced off head to head with my MultiCam Router (the cannon). A pea has somehow made it from Raymond’s side across the border - represented by the dotted line on the plaque. The end of his pea shooter s bent and frayed, spent in the futile battle of keeping up with my ‘vastly superior’ machine.
The second plaque I show here was made for my good buddy Rene Giroux from Quebec. Rene is French of course as represented by the frog in the cockpit. His router is represented by the tank, which has a windup key and a popgun complete with cork for fighting - no real threat to me or my router.
The end result was lots more rhetoric and a continued challenge to beat what was bound to follow. I’m ready for the soon to be continued battle and an ever higher standard which I will try my best to beat.
I’ll be in the trenches in Yarrow...
-grampa dan