Black Forest - Part 10

Once the last of the glazes is dry it is time to start painting the lettering. We started by putting two coats of a cream colour on the lettering.

At this point, the sign really comes together - the focus is clearly on the lettering! It is a sign after all and needs to do its job.

After that, we gilded the primary copy. And, once the gold leaf was on, we touched up the secondary lettering with couple of brush strokes of white to brighten it up and balance the sign.

The sign needed a couple of days of dry heat to cure before we sent it on to its final home.

Black Forest - Part 9

Our previous instalments in the Black Forest series we took a look at the design, routing, sculpting, and assembly of the sign. Once the last of the sculpting and assembly was finished we put on a texture coat of Coastal Enterprises primer. The primer evens out the texture over the entire piece and make it impossible to tell which parts were routed and which were done by hand.

The sign now looks positively massive!

With the priming complete, the Back Forest sign is now ready for paint.

As a rule, we apply coat after coat of paint on our projects. In addition to the primer, this sign will have a minimum of two coats of paint and four paint glazes.

We started with two coats of off-white. A slightly darker warm white was next and it was lightly towelled off.

A brighter orangish-yellow was next - it will provide some bright highlights after the dark glazes are put on. The sign looks pretty garish at this stage but it will tone down as we proceed.

A slightly purplish brown was the next glaze to be applied.

The last colour (which we call Plum Crazy) was applied sparingly in key areas to enhance the depth of the sign and to help the lettering stand out.

Making It A Feature

When we are building on our larger scale works, such as the Hazelnut Inn, we do our best to avoid scaffolding. In our experience, working on a scaffold effectively doubles the time a job takes.

That being said, it isn’t always possible to avoid scaffold work. Unfortunately, it isn’t always possible to use a standard scafold; sometimes the area is too small or the ground below is too steep or uneven.

When that happens we often resort to welding a custom scafflold. And very often these scaffolds are attached to whatever we are building.

Obviously we can’t leave the scaffold in place after we are finished. So what do we do with the areas where our scaffold was attached?

Sometimes we work our way down a structure, cutting the scaffold layer above us off and finishing as we go. Other times however it is better to leave the scaffold in place until the very end and “hide” the scaffold’s attachment point in plane sight. We make it a feature!

The small metal plate attached to the rock-work, pictured below, is called a rock bolt. They are used to stabilize rock excavations and are ubiquitous in our region. It blends into the jumble of rock and stone in this area perfectly and helps tell the story of an unstable wall. Little do our guests know, it doubled as a scaffold anchor point while we were building the wall.

So, the next time you have an unsightly necessity on your job site, you may want to consider making it a feature!