Hand Carved Signs

The "Bas Relief " or flat carving on signs is the most common carving we do. Sculpting in full 3D usually won't work for signs, as the full-blown hand-carved piece would overwhelm the sign.

As the copy or text of the sign itself is the important item, we most often will stick to a simple 3D carving of minimal thickness to portray the flower or whatever is required.

Cambryar the magnolia is carved out of a piece of HDU 


If you have one of our signs with a carving on it please photograph it and send it to us as we don't have many photographs especially of pieces we have carved for a house or home signs.

These Paddles for the Old Dominion Boat Club were shaped by hand mostly by sanding, they are 8 ft. long. The sign was created with a CNC router.  

The Cameo Lady (left) was hand-carved into a piece of HDU, then a Mold was made and the cameo was cast.

Very often simple is what's needed

Very often when we are carving a piece for a sign or hand painting a picture on a sign, we don't want too much detail. If your sign is going next to your door or entrance to your office, it's fine to have a beautifully painted or hand-carved piece for your sign. It will be viewed from close up by people standing still or walking slowly and it will have their undivided attention even if only for a few moments. That is enough for them to appreciate it.

However, if the hand-carved or hand-painted sign is going on a drive or out at the street as most signs do, especially business or shop signs; then too much detail will not be appreciated or even noticed. At five MPH a driver will do no more than give a cursory glance at your sign (he or she is thinking of much more important things like not driving into your flower bed).

At 15-20 MPH fine detail are unnoticeable and over 25 it is just a grey blur that can look awful. It's our job as a sign designer to find out where the sign is going and how fast the traffic will be going past it, then we can calculate the size of the letters needed to get your message to the appropriate parties.

So, when too much detail will be 

working against you, we simplify the design; sometimes to the point where we have almost a characterization of the image; (see the fruit to the right) it may look a little unreal when standing in front of the carved sign but at 40MPH it will look great and it will be recognized for what it is.

Below are two sets of relevant links to other pages on this site that may be helpful to you.

Directly below are links to other pages on different types of dimensional signs and below that are links to photo galleries relating to those types of signs.

• Sand Blasted sign   
• carved and routed 3-dimensional signs
• Sandblasted redwood signs
• Sandblasted wooden signs
• Prismatic letters on sandblasted signs
• Sandblasted signage
• Hand-carved signs   (this page) 
• HDU signs

• 23kt Gold leaf sign picture gallery
• Sandblasted Signs Gallery
• Monument Sign Gallery
• Sandblasted Wooden Signs Gallery
• Routed and carved sign picture gallery
• Community and subdivision signs gallery