It’s only ten and a half months until next year’s Sign Invitational at the International Sign Association EXPO in Orlando. Because our sponsor, Signs of the Times Magazine, has print deadlines, it shortens the timeline considerably and I really need to finish my entry by the end of February. This means there is no time to waste - especially if I don’t want to have to work long hours at the last minute. Things always take longer to do than we plan and other things always come up to delay the things I want to work on. All of that meant it was time to start doing a little work as often as I can. The preliminary plan was done on the plane ride home from this year’s event. I finished the concept drawing a few days later as I relaxed one evening. Over the last week I found some time to work up a routing file for the wheels of the little truck. Today, just before I went on a long and enjoyable bike ride I fired up the MultiCam CNC router and set it in motion. The wheels were routed in halves which I’ll glue together back to back before hand finishing. Since I’ll actually be building two of the display pieces, that meant I needed sixteen halves of the wheels. By the time I got back from my ride in the sunshine the router was well on the way to completing the first of many pieces to come. This is going to be fun!
New project
We are currently in the design process for a small indoor mini golf. The theme work all needs to be colourful and dramatic but not take upon a lot of room. Everything has to fit through a double door for installation as well. It’s a challenge! The first two features to get to the design table were the entrance to the park and the final feature. Golfers will golf into the back box of the truck. The front cab will be a fun photo op for our guests.
Following the curve
Every project we build has to follow the same building code as everyone else. Sidewalks can’t be steeper than 1 in 12 slope, railings need to be 42” high with a maximum space of 4” between the spindles and we need to engineer many of our components as required. The purpose of following these many rules is to keep people safe, especially important when we distract them with eye candy at every turn. But that does not mean we have to build in the same fashion as everyone else. Far from it. In our book curves are much more pleasing to the eye than straight and over the top fancy is better by far than plain.
Matthew started cutting and fitting the steel pipe for the front railing today. It was a challenging project. First the heavy hydraulic bender had to be hauled rom the shop to the worksite along with lots of pipe of course. This railing would have pleasing curves and also undulate vertically at the same time. This meant studying the required action, taking some notes, doing a gentle trial bend, hauling the railing pipe up to the wall and test fitting it, back to the bender for some more tweaking and then repeat until it matches the existing wall perfectly. Then it needs to be trimmed to length and carefully fit into place, ready to weld. No gaps bigger than 1/8” are allowed as up to that size is easily filled with weld. Five sections of pipe were bent and fit this afternoon. On Monday, Matt and Peter will do the top rail which follows a slightly different line than the bottom. Then they will mark out the spacing and cut and weld in the steel pickets, each with a unique length. It certainly isn’t the fastest way to build a fence but the end result is well worth the effort! Nice job Matt!
