It was with great delight we finished the very last welds and grinding on the D of the giant DOWNEYS sign. This project involved nineteen 4’ x 8’ sheets of steel, fifteen lengths of structural square tubing and more than five hundred lineal feet of welds. As soon as the final letter was done we rolled it out to join the others for a quick photograph and then rolled four letters back into the shop to begin welding up the pencil rod armatures that will allow us to sculpt the woodgrains into the open fronts. Over the next days we’ll do the armature, tie on the diamond lath to ready the project for the sculpting next week. Stay tuned…
Signs ready
The three smaller Downey signs are now substantially complete, and tomorrow morning, one final coat of paint will be brushed on the letters, along with a few minor touch-ups to the rear faces, to complete this portion of the order. The extensive metalwork on the D of the DOWNEYS letters will also be finalized by coffee break tomorrow, making all of the letters ready for the welded pencil rod lath, which is the next step. By weeks end, the letters will be prepared for the sculpted concrete. Stay tuned…
Twice as busy
There’s only one thing better than when Henry works in the shop, and that’s when he is joined by his sister Juniper. It was the perfect spring day, and both kids were eager to do some real work out at the shop. One of this weekend’s projects was to clean out the concrete mixing area. That involves some hard labour with a pickaxe or our little backhoe to break up the concrete floor area. The kids insisted it would be much faster if we did it with the pickaxes. I like to work smarter and not harder, so I stuck to the backhoe, but the kids thoroughly enjoyed doing things the hard way. Together, the job was accomplished in record time!
