Carousel Signs Gives Residential Development Wings

Bobby Wiltshire is proprietor and founder of Carousel Signs (Richmond, VA).

To be in business for 38 years, it’s been essential to build and maintain relationships. Our foun-dation of trust with longtime customers rivals the importance of the base structure for any monument sign we’ve fabricated.

Riverstone Properties LLC, a Richmond, VA-based company, developed Centerpointe Crossing, a residential development in suburban Richmond. We’ve produced several monument and vehicular-wayfinding signs for their other developments, so they contacted sales representative Travis Cole to execute a main-ID sign. Monument signs constitute roughly half of our shop’s business, and we’re proud of our reputation, earned from having built most of Richmond’s monument signs.

At presstime, no houses had yet been completed on the property, but Riverstone’s executives understood the importance of creating branding at an early juncture to build interest in their properties as they strive toward full occupancy.

Prep work
As usual, we began the project with a site survey. This involves discovering both the property’s tangible and intangible traits. It’s important to determine the condition of the soil onsite, the wind load the sign is likely to endure, and the ground’s grade and topography. And, it’s also important to design a sign that reflects the community’s character. A panel that’s decorated with a splashy graphics and an edgy typeface isn’t suitable for a rustic, rural environment.

Riverstone trusted our experience. Using a concept developed by Ashland, VA’s James River Nurseries, Alex Parker, a designer who’s since left the company, developed initial sketches.

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Designer Martin Speer continued work from Parker’s initial concept. After having worked through some pencil sketches, he scanned them into Adobe Creative Suite, and perfected the original designs with Photoshop and Illustrator software. The designer’s preferred facets with the Adobe design were the shape-builder and scale tools, and a new Kuler plug-in, a cloud-based program that allows an online or iPhone user to create and share custom color combinations.

To create the dimensional elements, Speer edited the vector files using Gerber Omega 5.0 software. He likes using Omega because it provides an endless art board. Speer said, “Years of experience have influenced my creation of a hybrid, collaborative process that continually reinvents itself, and yields fresh results for our clients.”

Getting in deep
Budget sometimes influences our fabrication approach, but, for most signs, we use high-density urethane (HDU). This project’s budget enabled us to create a more detailed sign that features handcarved, routed and handpainted details.

Carousel developed the technical drawings for the fence and masonry pillars, and fence-building contractor Allen LaVoie, and Glenn Daniel and Robert Fry, our masonry crew, constructed them. To support the stone pillars, we speced 2-ft.-deep, concrete footings.

Several factors influence a sign’s pricetag. In the masonry, natural stone costs less than cultured, manufactured material and provides greater durability, but cultured stone is acceptable for most sign applications. If stone is cost-prohibitive, we’ll opt for pole-mounted signage. Also, handcarving, gilding and powdercoating are other luxuries for which we can substitute if price is an issue. Premium paint is a requirement on which we won’t compromise.

We strongly recommend HDU for all of our monument and dimensional signage; most of our customers follow this suggestion. To fabricate the 8 x 8-ft., main-ID panel, we incorporated two, 4 x 8-ft. sheets of 18-lb., 1.5-in.-thick Sign•Foam® 3. The duck comprises approximately one-third of a 4 x 8-ft., 18-lb. sheet, and another one-third sheet of identical material became the lettering. We processed the panels on our Gerber Sabre 408 4 x 10-ft. CNC router, which provides 2-in., Z-axis clearance.

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We used a ¼-in., gold-carbide bit to cut the main-ID panels, and for the final cut-out and clean-out of the areas around the letters and the outside border. To carve the area around the duck, we used a 3/16-in. bit and a 1/8-in. bit around the letters. The 1/8-in. bit allows a tighter cut, which provides a sharp, clean cut around the letters. To shape the convex letters, we cut with a 150º-angle bit to make the rough cut-in before cleaning it out with the 1/8 bit.

Before any type of CNC-routing application, we make sure the vacuum is debris-free, and verify the substrate is stable and won’t move. Also, the bit is properly initialized to the correct depth. The depths are set in the router’s computer before the information is sent to the machine, but we still control the bit’s depth.

For certain cut-outs, such as letters, we initialize the bit to make a slightly shallower cut. This leaves some residual “skin” that will prevent the router from moving if the cut-outs aren’t directly over a vacuum hole.
The desired letter-return height dictates the thickness of convex-letter material. For this particular job, we used ¾-in.-thick material to create the desired, ½-in. return height. For some signs, we use aluminum or composite-material backer panels to support HDU signage, but, because of the heft of the sign’s integral panels, we determined a frame made from the same 18-lb. HDU material would provide sufficient support.

A pretty face
After the router completed the rough cut, fabricator Kat Kennon-Morris carved and painted the bird and background. For the background behind the bird, we used heavy gouges to maneuver through broad swaths of urethane. To create fine detail, we finessed a Dremel tool and an X-Acto® knife to create the duck’s features and accents around the letters. Our production team joined the sign’s layers with silicone and secured them with countersunk screws applied from the signface’s back layer.

We painted the sign with Sherwin-Williams acrylic-latex primer and paint. As I mentioned before, an effective paint job is one of the most important steps to ensuring a long life for our signs. Inside our shop’s custom paintbooth, we applied three coats of primer, with two hours of drying time allowed for each coat, which was followed by two layers of topcoat.

We handpainted the details on the bird’s face. To enhance the sign’s elegance, we applied 23k patent goldleaf atop 1Shot quick size on the sign’s letters and the accenting finials at either end of the signface’s center. To secure the sign to the fence, we used an 18V DeWalt drill to drill eight points into the panel. The rails were attached to cinder-blocks before the stone cladding was attached, and we secured the sign to the rails and the block with “L” brackets.

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We take pride in our work; when a customer’s budget allows us to spread our wings and use premium materials and techniques, it’s a welcome bonus. The residential- and commercial-development markets are gradually revitalizing, and we’re proud to play a role in helping developers promote their properties with appealing signage.

EQUIPMENT AND MATERIALS
Coatings: Acrylic-latex paint and primer, from Sherwin-Williams (Cleveland), (800) 474-3794 or www.sherwin-williams.com; 23k goldleaf, from Sepp Leaf Co. (NYC), (800) 971-7377 or www.seppleaf.com; 1Shot® quick size, from 1Shot, a division of Matthews Paint (Chicago), (773) 646-2778 or www.1shot.com
Router: Sabre 408 CNC Router, from Gerber Scientific Products (Tolland, CT), (800) 222-7446 or www.gspinc.com
Software: Omega 5.0 3-D-fabrication software, from Gerber Scientific Products; Creative Suite, from Adobe Inc. (San Jose, CA), www.adobe.com
Substrate: Sign•Foam® 3 18-lb., high-density urethane, from Sign Arts Products Inc. (San Juan Capistrano, CA), (800) 338-4030 or www.signfoam.com
Tools: Carving gouges, available at art-supply stores; Dremel® tool, U-bolts and countersunk screws, from hardware or building-supply stores
 

More About Carousel Signs
Bobby Wiltshire began his signmaking career with friend Dick Burton when he spent a year working in the paintshop at King’s Dominion in Virginia in 1976. According to a blog post on the company’s website, the mustachioed Wiltshire bristled at an order issued by higher management at King’s Dominion that all men be clean-shaven, and decided to leave the company.

The next year, the men founded Carousel Signs – the name was inspired by Burton’s wife in honor of their first project, refurbishing a vintage carousel. Later that year, Burton decided to leave the company, and Wiltshire became proprietor. His was the first shop in the Richmond area to offer 3-D, redwood signage.

Since then, the company has grown to 19 employees, and its portfolio has evolved to include residential- and commercial-development signage, church signs, temporary site signs, vehicle wraps and an array of other environmental graphics.

For more information, visit www.carouselsigns.com