The Fox & Hounds Pub project included a number of fictional beer advertisements. The pub is British, its timbers are, reportedly, from an actual pub in Britain. We needed these fictional signs to match this theme:

A quick internet search revealed that the Galapogos Islands were, apparently, discovered by a British sea captain who was blown off course in a fierce storm in 1593. This little tidbit inspired the “Laughing (Galapogos) Tortoise Beer.” (A beer that is best enjoyed at a very slow pace!)

We designed the sign in Illustrator — importing the vectors into EnRoute. The tortoise was just an outline at this point and would be hand carved and sculpted once the rest of the sign was routed.

The sign was routed from two layers of 1.5" thick 30 lbs. Precision Board HDU (high density urethane). To build the file, we separated the vectors for each layer and created reliefs for each element.

The next screen shot shows the various files as we merged (highest) them together. The blue outline is the base file while the red outlines are the files we merged to it.

We also created an oval with the”laughing tortoise” text.

We also built the scroll and “beer” lettering. It was machined flat since we planned to do a little hand sculpting later to finish the curved ends of the scroll and blend it into the bottom layer.

It didn’t take long to finish up the file and send it to the router.

See you next week!