Advice Please

Hi guys, I have been asked to bid on repairing (4) entrance signs for a HOA. The current signs are a 7'x11' ellipse made with natural stone tiles with 12" metal faced foam letters glued onto the face, which the young vandals keep tearing off. Rather than giving the kids more fun, I thought it would be better to use a solid surface with the lettering carved or lightly sandblasted into it. I have no sign experience so I'm not sure what to use. Signfoam, extira, or I see some that look like Corian, but I don't know. My table is 4'x8' so whatever I use will have to be that size or cut in sections and put together. I know I going in over my head but, that's how you learn and I really could use the money. Thank you for any advice or suggestions. Dan

Outsource it to Joe, work in his shop for free to learn...add 25% plus installation...





Gene Crain
www.plantasymaderas.com

Try PVC .75" and carve a panel to fit inside the 7 X 11. Stud mount, double sided tape and silicone the carved and painted panel to the tile surface.

Practice you routing skills on .50" scrap pieces. Its not hard. Take your time. I had the same feeling. Got to make money with this machine.

Painting PVC requires priming it with Tie Bond Adhesive. It promotes paint to PVC which is tricky.

HDU is easliy damaged with stones if vandalism is the issue. Pvc can take a lickin and keep on tickin.

Call if you would like to discuss issues.

Mike

I'm going to give Gene his usual commision.

Dan, I have the pleasure to work with several HOA's each year. Seldom do they mature into work.

Price is very important with HOA's. They seldom have a budget for you to work with so it's best to talk about money at the start. I wouldn't get too involved with design or concepts unless there's some kind of financial understanding.

I'd be glad to give it a look and offer a few suggestions. Please post a photo or two. It might help someone else on the forum

Joe Crumley
www.normansignco.com

Thanks for your responses.
Gene, great idea, probably the best way to go. Even though I am not in the sign biz. I have read enough about and from Joe to know what an opportunity that would be!! It says alot about the man to have his knowledge and skills and to share it freely with total strangers everyday to help them.
Mike, I'm in your first post,how cool! I didn't think about the PVC. Great suggestion. I was wondering about a 4x8 ellipse panel making the lettering too small. Also, with .750 would the letters need to be flat bottom as opposed to V-carve because of the depth, or can I alter the toolpath to make them more shallow?
Professor Crumley, thanks for chiming in. Your right, as the Rep. was amazed at the price of just replacing the letters from 3 shops. My suggestion about the whole panel might be more than they want to spend at one time, or they can keep paying me to replace them every year! Don't know if they will figure it out. I will try to get some pics up and maybe some idea of the budget and go from there. Thanks again to everyone for your time.

Dan,
Somewheres around $300 buys a very small camera that could be inserted into your work. It's motion activated and you can download pics with a date time stamp.
Some can be infrared for day and night use.
If this has happened before it may be worth a little research.
Heck...if an insurance company is involved they might purchase the needed equipment.
Another sign you might be hired to make is "Smile, You Are On Candid Camera!"

Chuck, you are right about the camera, I still have a motion activated one from my old store just for the same reasons. I have offered it to them to use if they want. Hehe, I like the "candid" idea! Thanks,Dan.

Dan

I must agree with Joe about the HOA's purchasing practices. We as sign makers always would like to offer the nicest and prettiest solution to our customers problems.

In a lot of cases we had blown ourselves out of the water by offering a $100 sign when they wanted to spend $10. Alot of times the only way you found out you lost is when the $10 version has been installed.

Especially in this economy money as most of us know is in short supply.

In regards to your questions. You certainly change the depth of the cuts. Also their are many different angle v-bits. The fun is learning how to use them and the different looks you can acheive.

I only started with my Shopbot in January of this year. Compared to the other folks on this forum I know very little. However, we have produced some nice results.

Happy Thanksgiving to all and may next year bring some measure of profitability.

Mike

Thanks Mike, between you and Joe, I'm starting to get the picture. I will make contact with the Rep. and get a better idea of what we are dealing with. If it gets that far, would you recommend a 4x8 single panel that will leave a stone border around, or a 7x11 multi-piece panel to fill the entire area? Thanks again for sharing you time and help.

http://tinypic.com/r/28mpc8k/6

http://tinypic.com/r/2qi3es6/6

From the photos, I'd stop using double sided tape to apply letters like that and I'd start stud mounting the letters into the sign. If done right, it's going to be a lot of effort to pull off a properly installed letter.