Fox & Hounds Pub & Restaurant Construction: Part 1

When we began work on the Fox & Hounds Pub & Restaurant, it had already been operating for decades. The heavy post and beam building was actually brought to Canada from England, and was more than a century old. And, while this original structure remained intact, the owners were building an addition that more than doubled its size. The challenge was to modernize and refurbish the pub while enhancing and expanding its original charm. All while the original portions of the building stayed open for business.

Our job was to make the new construction look like it has been there for at least a hundred years — warping, bending and aging everthing to achieve that look. And we had three months to complete the project.

As I mentioned, construction was well underway, with the new addition now almost to lockup stage. Since we had no input to this point we needed to work with everything already planned and currently in construction. But, 'restrictions' like these are the life’s blood of creativity!

The addition’s entryway needed to indicate strongly to guests that they had entered a magical place. To achieve this we designed ‘ancient’ twisted timbers interspersed with flowing lines of ‘old’ brick walls. Even the tile-work on the floor followed an undulating line.

After three days on the project. we had already made good progress framing out the straight and level structures the carpenters had built; making them look like the heavy, bent timbers of a one hundred year old pub. As this plywood frame was completed, we covered it with expanded lath, over which we would later apply and sculpt our concrete.

Come back and see more next week!

Laughing Tortoise Sign: Part 1

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!

Fox Head Barrel

As part of the design process for our Fox & Hounds Pub project, we created a few samples. These pieces also helped to ensure the contractor and trades were on the same page and knew what to expect from us. Our first sample was a fox medallion.

My father created the vectors for the barrel in EnRoute and then used the jigsaw tool (pictured below) to create the staves of the barrel.

He created the outer ring and the barrel top first. (As usual) he used the render button to double check his work.

Then dad selected the outer staves of the barrel and built each one separately (with slight variations in height). As usual, he created each one as a separate relief.

Then he imported the sandblasted wood grain bitmap (from our Texture Magic: Classic Collection).

Since bitmaps can't be rotated inside of EnRoute, dad selected everything else and rotated the reliefs to apply the textures to the barrel staves. At this point everything was merged together for form one relief.

To create the fox, dad used a stock STL file. He resized and positioned it before merging it to the barrel top he had created previously.

And just like that it, was ready to tool path and send off to the CNC router.