Chickahominy Falls
Chicka-what?
This is a new community that is being created and the first sign we made was something of a test.
My clients customer wanted to have the look of a monolithic slab of rough hewn sandstone and all that that entails but they also wanted the letters to appear to have evolved out of the face and that meant having the same color on the sides as well as the face of the letters.. With an uneven textured face that would have been very difficult to keep it looking really sharp.
This was the first test we created; the letter has a hammered bronze finish.
Carving & Shaping
Because the face of the block wasn't smooth or level we decided that the best way to produce it was to create the face first and deal with the letters next. Once the sample was approved we cut two 10 ft x 2 ft x 2" slabs of HDU, and I proceed to carve the fracture lines.
Between sanding carving and grinding it started to take on the look I wanted.
Next we took it to the sandblasting area and standing well away from the panel we sandblasted it very lightly just enough to texture the face
It was brought back in and placed on the CNC router where the shape of the letters were "hogged out" to a depth of 0.5".
It was then returned to the sandblast area and final texturing was carried out (removing any unwanted tool marks etc).
The individual letters were cut out with the router.
These are 1.5" deep so that once epoxied into the face they would protrude about 1". (this photo just shows an "a" cut out )
We needed to rout a place for the 2 x 2" aluminum sq. tube to be epoxied in, to support one end of the sign and to do that I had to make a template for the hand held router
Normally I would have cut it with a jig saw or similar but now I was able to put a piece of 0.5" plywood into the laser and cut it out in about 35 seconds.
It made a great template:
Next we epoxied the 2" x 2" aluminum tube between the faces to make 1 - 4" thick sign slab
The end plate was welded onto the tubes and painted
If this or any other sign we create appears to look a little overdone or exaggerated; consider this.
Almost no one will ever view this sign the way you are looking at it right now. You are looking intently at it and the simple truth is that this sign will be read by:
- Folks who have never seen it before
- They will be driving, concentrating on the road, watching for the turning, watching other traffic , listening to the radio, or talking with their other haves.
- They will have their minds on a thousand different things most won't even know what color it was.
But they will know it looked like a large slab of stone. That's why we rarely paint a nice little picture on any sign. At 15 MPH it will become a grey blob, unrecognizable to everyone. We have to create a characterization of reality enough that it is instantly recognized whilst it is paid no attention what so ever.
