Blonde on Tap

Through the years, our shop’s unusual portfolio has earned us the reputation of being unafraid to tackle virtually any project. The owners of Niagara’s Best, a brewpub in Niagara Falls, ON, Canada, called us with a project that was exotic even by our standards.
The establishment, which serves nine lagers, ales, pilsners and stouts – as well as a series of seasonal beers – wanted to promote its signature brew, Blonde Premium Ale. Jamie Burns, Niagara’s Best’s owner, found us on the Internet and approached us. He asked us to create a 10-ft.-tall, supersized rendering of a tap perched atop the entrance, which would feature the upper rim of a fizzy “glass” of beer as a façade above the door.
To serve as a model, Niagara’s Best provided a tap handle, which features a curvaceous, leggy blonde figurine on top. Of course, an 11-in.-tall figurine as a model for a 10-ft.-tall project requires major scaling. I took a picture of the tap, scanned it into my PC as vector art and detailed the design using CorelDraw X3.

Tapped out
To ensure our structure wouldn’t obscure the pub’s entrance, we created a template out of cardboard that replicates the actual door. Then, we began carving the tap’s form from expanded-polystyrene foam (EPS), which we formed on our MultiCam 1000 CNC router. Next, we bonded five, 4-in.-thick, EPS layers together with compressed, spray-foam insulation.
The spray foam cures to a soft finish, which made carving the project easier. To build up the sculpture, we applied Magic Smooth, a sculpting epoxy, with trowels and other assorted paint-scraping tools. To fortify the tap sculpture, we built a 2 in. x 2-ft., steel frame into its structure.
Finally, we applied the graphics – Niagara’s Best’s Blonde Premium ale logo – to the tap. We produced it on our Roland DGA Corporation SolJet Pro III 54-in.-wide printer using Avery’s Easy Apply RS air-egress media. To protect the graphic, we applied Avery’s DOL 1370 luster-finish, cast overlaminate.

More than a pretty face
A mega-sized tap would have certainly made quite a statement from the Niagara’s Best outside wall. But, to promote its Blonde Ale, a bombshell babe poised atop the tap added major curb appeal. Alfie Machado, a fabricator in our shop, fabricated the EPS-foam sculpture with gouges, rasps and various handcrafting tools.
After he finished his base sculpture, he applied Magic Smooth and Magic Sculpt epoxies to build up his handiwork. For areas that required less definition, Machado used Magic Smooth, which creates a harder, smoother finish. For areas that required finer features, such as the hair, facial features and hands, he used Sculpt, which provides a more malleable surface that facilitates creating subtle details.
Machado allowed the epoxies to cure for 24 hours. After this, he primed the shapely sculpture with 1Shot® primer and decorated it with 1Shot’s lettering enamels, which produced a glossy finish that matched the tap’s sheen quite well.

A super-sized glass
To build the beer glass’s support structure, we created a stick-frame structure using sections of 0.080-in.-thick, 2 in. x 2-ft., aluminum angle. For many of these types of sculptures, we use 0.063-in.-thick aluminum, but we wanted extra strength and rigidity for the 10-ft.-wide frame. We considered it like building a big channel letter.
To create the beer graphic, I obtained an image from www.istockphoto.com, a stock-photography, royalty-free website. Like the graphics on the tap face, we output the graphics on our Roland printer with Avery media. To help the print adhere to the aluminum frame, we coated the frame with 1Shot primer and fire-red lettering enamels. Dan Drouin applied the graphic to the frame.
We hired Stevenson Insulation (Kitchener, ON, Canada) to fill the “glass” with urethane-foam spray. To protect the graphic from the spray, we left a layer of transfer tape. After having allowed the urethane to cure for 24 hours, we painted the foam with the 1Shot coatings used to cover the frame.

Making a splash
We transported the sculptures to Niagara’s Best with our bucket-lift truck. To mount the beer glass to the fascia, we built a mounting plate that affixed off the roof’s peak. We mounted the sign to an existing bracket left from the facility’s prior business. Using DeWalt Impact drills, we created holes to fit the façade and secured it with Tapcon masonry screws and lag bolts. Eric Tomlinson and Rob Turner teamed up to handle installation.
On installation day, the temperature exceeded 90° F. Many neighborhood residents and passersby catcalled and said they’d love to be served a glass of beer the size of our fascia cover! It was a grueling day, but we persevered,knowing that a pub tour and several samples of the brews produced inside would be awaiting us.
Niagara’s Best provided a challenging, yet enjoyable, project. Burns was the rare client who increased his budget once he realized the potential benefits of having a large, truly unique sign. He pitched the idea, and we appreciate how he pushed us to expand our creativity and skill to accomplish the job.

 

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Equipment and Materials
Coatings: 1Shot® primer and lettering enamel, from 1Shot LLC (Chicago), (773) 646-2778 or www.1shot.com
Digital print: MPI 1005 Easy Apply RS media and DOL 1370 luster-finish overlaminate, from Avery Dennison’s graphics and reflective-products division (Painesville, OH), (800) 443-9380 or www.averygraphics.com; SolJet Pro solvent-ink printer, from Roland DGA Corporation (Irvine, CA), (800) 542-2307 or www.rolanddga.com
Hardware: XRP drill with Impact wrench attachments, from DeWalt (Baltimore), (800) 433-9258 or www.dewalt.com; Tapcon concrete screws, from ITW Brands (Schaumburg, IL), (877) 489-2726 or www.itwbrands.com; Aluminum angle and steel frame, available from building-supply and home-improvement stores.
Router: MultiCam 1000 CNC router, from MultiCam Inc. (Dallas), (972) 8929-4070 or www.multicam.com
Software: CorelDRAW x3, from Corel Corp. (Ottawa, ON, Canada), www.corel.com
Substrates: Expanded-polystyrene foam, available from building-supply stores; insulation spray foam, available from home-improvement and building-supply stores; urethane-foam filler, provided by Stevenson Insulation (Kitchener, ON, Canada), (519) 743-7959 or www.stevensoninsulation.ca; Magic Smooth and Magic Sculpt sculpting epoxies, available from Abracadabra Signs (Paris, ON, Canada), (519) 442-0847 or www.abracadabrasigns.com

More About Steve
Steve Thomas Greer, founder of Abracadabra Murals (Paris, ON, Canada), began his artistic career as a mural painter who traversed North America developing restaurant signage. Ten years ago, he built a larger shop and began fabricating dimensional signage and graphics. Today, his shop has grown into an eight-employee enterprise that exclusively creates signage and graphics for various restaurant concepts, which includes LED-lit channel letters, monument signage and other sign types. Greer didn’t require much additional equipment or capacity to broaden his signmaking repertoire. In 2007, Greer’s shop won second place in the Vehicle Graphics category of ST’s International Sign Contest (see ST, April 2007, page 118).
Greer and his wife, Danna, who serves as Abracadabra’s corporate sales director, have two daughters, Gabi and Gracie.