I’ve been involved in hundreds of installations through the years. It is always rewarding to see weeks or months of shop work finally installed. The semi truck full of signs and features arrived at Vala’s Pumpkin patch yesterday morning. Within two hours we had carefully pulled them all from the trailer and set everything safely on the ground without a scratch. I then directed Vala’s crew as we hooked up each piece, unbolted it from the shipping stand and then transported the signs to their permanent home. That alone was a great adventure for the farm is spread out over manny acres of rolling land. Each trip down the winding, narrow and tree lined roads was made at a slow walking pace with the heavy feature dangling from its lifting straps. We weren’t in a hurry for the job was to do everything safely. After a long first day we only had one sign remaining to install. Each sign, when installed looked like it had been on the farm since its inception. Kudos to Becke for picking a great colour scheme with just the right amount of aging. Vala’s large staff, busy making preparations for their fast approaching season stopped to cheer us on and to take a quick selfie for posterity. As good as the signs look now, they will soon look even better, surrounded by flowers and pumpkins. These folks are good at putting on a world class show. I’m greatly anticipating my return in about five weeks when the grounds will be perfect and the place swarming with happy guests.
Installations
Happily, all then pieces we built for Vala’s farm arrived safe and sound. My father was on hand to give a little direction for the installation and apparently everything went swimmingly. There is only one sign left to install tomorrow and I am looking forward to some more pictures!
Plane fun
I was contacted by a supplier this past week who makes hard coats for styrofoam. He was surprised to hear that we had previously used their product about fifteen years ago. At the time we were considering doing carved and hard coated foam but the one project cured me of that notion, for the chemicals used are very toxic and a full protection suit with supplied air is required to safely use the product. We opted instead to go with our sculpted high density urethane, sculpting epoxies and sculpted concrete. We can achieve far higher detail and with reasonable caution be much safer at the task. The friendly fellow I talked with sent me a link to their product website - just in case we had such a need in the future. I took a look to see what was new since we had last used it. Not much had changed and I was surprised to see a picture on their front page of the large scale plane we had built long ago. As I recall it had a wingspan of about 12’ and now hangs over a swimming pool in a community recreation centre somewhere in the Canadian prairies.
