Book of Shadows Signage v3.0 (part 3)

Having finished the main sign, I started working on the accent pieces. Because the new sign is only half the width of the old sign, I knew I needed something else to take up the extra room on the marquee, or the sign would look too small for the space. In keeping with the Victorian Gothic theme, I decided to try to make something that looks like filigree, or fretwork, to flank the sign on either side and take up some of that empty space.

The first thing I needed to do was to determine the size of the fretwork, how much space I had to work with, and how big I wanted the fretwork to be. Also, how big of a piece of material I had to work with. After roughing out how big I wanted it, and roughly what shape I wanted it, I looked around on line for some line art, but I didn't really find anything that fit the bill. I'm not great at drawing, but when pressed, I usually come up with something passable. So, I got a piece of butcher paper roughly the size of what I needed and taped it to the wall. Then I just started doodling on the edge until I had a design that I was happy with.

Once I had a rough design, I started sketching it out at 1:1 scale on the butcher paper. I made marks to block out where the outer edges should be, and I marked a mid-line, and a few other reference  points to try to keep things symmetrical. It took a few tries. There was some erasing, but I ended up with something I thought would suit my needs.

 I only really had to focus on half of it. Once I got that half worked out, it would be easier to just fold the paper at the mid-line (the line of symmetry) and then cut out both sides at once. This ensures that both sides are perfectly symmetrical.

 I laid the paper template out on a table next to the sign to see how it would look in position.

 The dimensions for this fretwork element were partly based on the piece of particle board I had set aside to use for it. It was a scrap that had been laying around my dad's shop for years. In hindsight, I think I should have used a better quality piece of wood for this, but it worked out.

I laid the paper template out on the particle board and lightly spray painted over the edges, leaving a ghost outline on the wood. This would be my cut line. This trick is a lot quicker and easier than trying to trace around the paper template with a pencil.

I made two ghost outlines of the template, one for each side of the sign, and then started cutting them out with a jig saw. Then I painted them both with at least two coats of black exterior paint. I'm hoping that I got them sealed well enough, because if the weather gets through to the wood, these things are just going to disintegrate.

From an early stage I knew I wanted to tie these into the trim on the main sign by cladding them with copper. At first I thought of using the same copper foil, but that would have ended up in a wrinkly patchwork mess. Around the same time I got that foil, I also got a roll of copper sheeting. It was also on sale, but it was still expensive. I think it was something like $90 for a ten foot roll. It's probably somewhere in the vicinity of 24 gauge thickness. Expensive. But it would do a nice job of cladding these pieces. The only problem was, I had never tried anything like this before, and if it didn't work, I would have basically ruined $100 worth of copper sheeting. And I only had enough to do it once.

Oh, there was one more issue. I thought my roll was 24" wide, but I hadn't looked at it in a while. Turns out it was only about 20" wide.  Not quite as wide as the parts that I made. So, I would have to do the cladding in two pieces. I was hoping to avoid a seam, but I would just have to do my best to make it unobtrusive.

I laid the fretwork piece out on the copper and traced around it with a marker. Then I used some emery cloth to rough up the surface of the copper inside the lines, so that it would adhere better to the wooden piece. I spent some time thinking about what kind of adhesive I would use, ruminating on the lessons learned from putting the foil trim around the main sign. I decided on construction adhesive.

I spread the construction adhesive out  on the copper, inside my tracing lines, making sure to get good coverage, especially around the edges. For some reason I had a bad feeling about it as soon as I started. I had used Liquid Nail brand adhesive before with good results, but I went with the Heavy Duty variety this time, and it looked different from what I was used to seeing. I don't know why I doubted it, but I had a funny feeling it wasn't going to work.

I set the fretwork piece in place and put it under weight to dry.

It should have dried within a couple of hours, but by the next day, it still wasn't completely dry. I left it set for a couple more days, just to give it the best possible chance to cure, but when I came back to check on it, it was clear that it was separating at the edge in some places. When I picked at it, it pealed away easily. It had not adhered to the copper. It looked to me like the water in the glue had corroded the copper as it was drying, and that may have inhibited the adhesion.

Thinking I may have ruined my copper sheeting, I carefully pried the copper away from the wood piece, trying hard not to damage it too much.  Luckily it came off without destroying either the copper sheeting or the fretwork. I would at least get another shot at it. It did, however, take a LOT of scraping and sanding to remove all of the glue from both the copper and the wood.

I looked at several other adhesives, careful to read the labels of each, and was surprised that several mentioned copper specifically as not recommended for. There must be something about copper that reacts with the glue and prevents adhesion. Apparently this is a thing, and I didn't know about it. Still thinking that construction adhesive was the way to go, I looked for another brand, that didn't mention copper in the "not recommended for" fine print. I finally settled on Gorilla Glue construction adhesive. It was more expensive by a good margin, but I already had over $100 into just these fret pieces. Not to mention the rest of the sign. . 

Fortunately, the Gorilla Glue worked, at least well enough. Now, onto the hard part, routing around the edges.

I had never really used a router before. My dad never taught them to me, other than to say to be leery of them.  I think they scared him. He hardly ever used them, and he seemed overly cautious of them. As a result, I had no experience with them, and he had instilled a little bit of his aversion for them into me. But a router is what the situation called for, so a router is what I used.

 I managed to find a trim router and a flush trim bit amongst my father's tools and set about to remove the excess copper sheeting from around the fretwork. The flush trim bit has a bearing on the tip that rides along the edge of the work piece, so that you can not cut into the work piece by mistake. The bearing rides along the work piece and lets the cutter get right up to the edge without hitting it. It is used primarily for trimming laminate after it is glued to a counter top or other substrate. I was using it in exactly the same way, just that my laminate material was copper sheeting, not formica.

I had to drill pierce holes in some places in order to rout out the interior curves. One thing that I was not prepared for was how painful it would be having the tiny shards of copper flying at me (especially at my off-hand) at very high speeds. 

This process made a huge mess, and didn't leave much usable scraps, but when it was done, it ended up looking pretty much like I had hoped that it would. Even the small seam at the tip didn't look that bad. I had to do a little work with a file to get down into all the little corners because the router bit is round and can't make a radius of less than 1/4 inch. Also, all the the edges needed to be smoothed out with a file. The router left them pretty rough.

I had to touch up a few spots around the edges where the router cut into the paint. Then I gave each of the two pieces several coats of spar urethane on all sides.

I'm actually quite pleased with the way they turned out. I'm still debating about how I'm going to mount them to the marquee. But we can cover that in another post.


See Also:
Book of Shadows Signage v3.0 (part 1)
Book of Shadows Signage v3.0 (part 2)
Book of Shadows Signage v3.0 (part 4)

Book of Shadows Signage v3.0 (part 1)

This project has been a long time coming. I started work on it about a year ago, and I intended to publish a post about it when the project was finished, but now I'm thinking that because it is a big project with multiple parts, and also because there is some concern whether or not it will ever get installed, maybe I should piece it out into a couple of posts, and start publishing them now.

My store, Book of Shadows in Canton Ohio, had its 20 year anniversary in 2016. It should have been a time of celebration and there should have been a big expansion and much ado, but because of personal stuff, it kind of came and went with barely a mention. One of the things that I had planned to do for the anniversary, was to make a new marquee sign to put on the facade, a really nice one. Since this location opened, it has had two marquee signs, both made by myself. Last spring we had a big storm and it damaged the current sign. The wood was starting to rot pretty badly due to weather exposure, and about a fifth of it got ripped down by the wind.

The building is about 20 feet wide, and the marquee is about six or so feet tall. Both of the previous signs were made from two full 4'x8' sheets of plywood (or paneling). The new sign will be a little smaller. It will be made from a single 4'x8' sheet of plywood that is centered, and flanking it will be two decorative scroll-work pieces and two large wall mounted carriage lantern style sconces.

The current aesthetic theme of the shop is sort of a Victorian parlor, with a few goth and steampunk touches. The color pallet is dark red and black, with a lot of brass and stained woodwork. The new sign is going to be raised black lettering, with red edges, on a sandalwood/beige background, with copper trim. The decorative scroll-work pieces flanking the sign will be black edged and clad in copper, and the sconces are brass.

Step number one in a project like this, after determining your scale and design, is to work up a scale image of your lettering, printed out on a grid, so it can be transferred to the full scale material. I chose a font and made a scale vector drawing of the full size sign, and scaled the lettering to fit on the sign the way I wanted it. Then I superimposed a grid over the image at what would represent 6 inch squares at full size, and printed it out for reference.

Next I drew a grid on my sheet of plywood, with six inch squares, using a straight edge. These are going to be raised letters, so they are going to get cut out of the plywood, and placed onto another background board. The grid is a common method of scaling images to be transferred. Using a grid makes it easier to free-hand the lettering, because you only have to concentrate on one square at a time, and it gives you reference lines to keep you on track. Just make sure that where an image's outline crosses a grid square line at a certain place on the paper, the same outline crosses in the same spot on the same square on the scaled up version you are drawing, and everything should turn out looking pretty close to the original. Using this method helps to make up for my lack of natural artistic ability.

Where there were letters of the same size that matched (like the two O's in BOOK), I only had to draw one of them with the grid. For the second one, I could just trace the first one after it was cut out. This cuts down on my chances for error, lessens a very tedious and stressful part of the job, and helps make similar letters look more alike.

After the letters were drawn on the plywood, I cut each of them out with a jig saw and/or the band saw. Then I traced any that needed repeated, and cut those out as well. The letters were of a scrolly gothic font, so cutting them out was a bit of a challenge.

Once all the pieces were cut out, I gave each of them a primer coat of exterior grade latex house paint (white). I hung each letter on a peg board in my father's workshop while the paint was drying. After the primer coat was dry, I used red spray paint to color the edges.

The faces of each letter were painted with black exterior grade house paint. Then, each was given a couple of coats of spar urethane to weather seal it. I'm making an effort to seal this sign against the weather as much as I can, in the hopes that it will not rot out the way the current one did. Though to be fair, that one did last for quite a few years.

While the letters were still loose, I traced them onto some chip board, just in case I needed to recreate them at the same scale for any reason. I wouldn't have to draw them over again. I will keep these sheets of chipboard for reference for a few years. If it turns out I don't need them for anything, I can always reuse the chipboard for something else.

While I was working on the letters I was also preparing the background board. I rounded the corners of another sheet of plywood and gave it several coats of a sandalwood/beige colored house paint. The back side that will be up against the wall got several coats of an odd maroon color, just to use up some old paint that would otherwise have no use, and because it will never be seen.

In an effort to spice things up and as a tie-in to the steampunk style, I wanted to add some real copper trim to the background board. I have tried metal leaf paint in the past, and it did not hold up to the weather, and it is very hard to capture the look of metal with acrylic paints. I have a roll of copper foil that I got on sale at the hardware a while back. It is meant to be used as a termite barrier, and it has an adhesive backing on it. But my past experience has taught me that the adhesive is unreliable, so I will have to strip it off and use another kind of adhesive to attach the foil to the background board.

Peeling the vinyl backing paper off of the copper foil was a nightmare. In small sections it is not so bad, but trying to pull it off of several feet at a time, sucked. I had to clamp the foil to the table, and pull the backing paper off while gripping it with pliers. The adhesive sticks to the backing paper quite strongly. It's a shame that it looses its grip over time when stuck to anything else.

I used Goo Gone and a putty knife to help loosen the adhesive while peeling the baking off. That helped. Then I had to use the Goo Gone to take off the rest of the adhesive from the back of the foil.

Once the foil was free from its backing and adhesive, I cut it into strips to be wrapped around the edge of the background board. In order to wrap around the rounded corners of the background board, I had to cut darts into the foil. 

The adhesive that I used to apply it to the background board needed to be flexible, very strong and waterproof. At first I tried caulking, but I had a hard time getting it to stay in place. It didn't have enough initial tack. I also thought it might peel from the non-porous surface of the copper foil after it was dry. So, I got a couple of tubes of E-6000. I have had good results with it in the past and it fits all my requirements. 

In order to keep the foil pressed tightly to the background board while the glue was drying, I used furring strips and many many spring clamps. I worked in sections, maybe four feet or so at a time. I tried to be mindful of how the joints overlapped. I treated it like metal flashing, always pointing the seam downward, to allow water to run off and not work its way into the seam or under the foil. I also made sure the edges of the plywood had several coats of spar urethane applied before the foil went on.

That will do it for part 1. More to come on this project. Stay tuned.

See Also:
Book of Shadows Signage v3.0 (part 2)
Book of Shadows Signage v3.0 (part 3)
Book of Shadows Signage v3.0 (part 4)



.
.
.
.

Copper Elder Sign Box

I thought I had posted this item, but now I can't find it anywhere on this blog, so, I guess I will do a quick post about it now. I made this Elder Sign box several years ago. It started as a small cheap trinket box that I bought on clearance from a local wholesale club. It had a nice dark stained rustic wooden body, that was well made, and a ceramic tile set into the top. The tile had Christmas art on it- a snowman, I think. I liked everything about the box, except for the art.

I had purchased wooden boxes with tile tops from this place in the past, and the last ones I had, I sanded the surface of the tile, painted over it, and added a cast resin applique to the top, and sold it in my shop. No pictures of those ones I'm afraid. This time I thought I would try something different.

A couple of years ago, I found a roll of heavy copper foil on clearance at the hardware store. It had an adhesive backing on one side and I guess you are supposed to use it as flashing around the foundation of your house. I think it is supposed to repel termites. I don't know, I threw away the box a long time ago. I bought it because it was a big roll of copper foil, and fairly cheap.

My first few attempts at using this foil, I was tempted to make use of the adhesive that is already on the foil. It seemed pretty strong, as it was a bear to get the vinyl backer to peel off. Unfortunately, the adhesive does not stay strong. Over time (a few months), it will inevitably loosen up and the copper foil will pull away from whatever you stuck it to. So, I have since learned that I must scrub off the adhesive and use a different glue. Kind of a pain, but whatever.

This box has a cast resin Elder Sign appliqued to the top, underneath the copper foil. I carved the sigil by hand out of a block of wax (years ago). I think this was actually the first thing I tried to carve in wax. Then I made a latex rubber mold of the carving. I use the rubber mold to cast all kinds of stuff, plaster and cement disks, resin appliques, whatever I need an Elder Sign for.

I put the resin casting on a work surface covered in vinyl contact paper (a.k.a. shelf liner). Vinyl contact paper makes a good non-stick work surface. Then I cut a square of copper foil and covered the casting with room to spare around the edges. I used various sculpting tools, mostly ones with round metal tips, to work the foil around the casting and into all the contours and creases. Sort of like chasing. When it was done, I carefully peeled the copper loose from the table and the casting. I sprayed the reverse side of the copper with strong spray glue and put the casting back into the cavity. Then I masked off and sprayed the tile with glue too. I glued the foil, along with the casting, down to the tile and trimmed the edges of the foil. Then I smoothed everything out and worked the edges of the foil around the edges of the tile, making them disappear. I didn't do anything to weather or seal the copper. I just let it gain a natural patina.

I had this box on the Rogue Cthulhu prize table for a while. But lately I have been thinking of giving it as a gift to someone in the Mythos prop community. I'm just looking for the perfect thing to put inside of it first.

Copper and Oak Bowl

This is my fourth attempt at turning a bowl. I'm not quite sure why, but bowl turning has not come easily to me. I have had numerous problems with every aspect of the endeavor. The most serious of which are very bad catches. That's when the chisel or gouge gets caught in the wood and either tares a big chunk out of it, or the chisel, or the work piece (or both) go flying across the room. They are dangerous, and scary as hell. I don't know if it is the lathe speed, my tool choice, my tool technique, the tool sharpness, the grain orientation, the tool rest position; I don't know what the hell the problem is. I watch video after video on bowl turning, and it all looks simple enough, but when I put it into practice, it all goes to shit. My best bowl I've made to date is the one I rescued from the garbage. I've seen several other YouTube-ers turn their first bowl, and it looks gorgeous- and it's starting to piss me off.

So, this is my fourth attempt at turning a bowl. I'm doing my best to do everything right. I'm using hardwood, I'm trying to follow good technique. I'm being patient and taking my time.

I started with a big block of 3"x 8"x24" oak cribbing. The surface was really nasty and black, and it has some cupping, so I used a hand plane and my new drum sander to get the two main faces nice and smooth. Then I cut it into two 8"x8"x3" blocks and glued them together along the freshly smoothed face to make an 8"x8"x6" bowl blank. I was surprised at how nice this nasty chunk of wood looked after it was cleaned up and smoothed out.

After the glue was dry, I found the center , scribed a circle with a compass, and used the band saw to rough cut the block into a round blank.  Then I drilled a 5/8" hole in the marked center, about 2" deep. Into this hole, I screwed a screw chuck, which I will use to attach the blank to my lathe scroll chuck.

Once the block was chucked up on the screw, the first thing I did was true up the blank, making it nice and round (cylindrical), and squaring off the bottom (the end not attached to the chuck). Then I marked a circle with a pencil, on the bottom, that is the size of my scroll chuck jaws. I carefully cut a mortise in this circle, so that after I finish shaping the outside of the bowl, I can turn the blank around and reverse chuck the blank using this mortise. I take extra care to shape the mortise so that it has the best chance to be held tightly. I have had problems in the past with blanks getting pulled out of the chuck when I get a catch. I think this has been because I did not shape the mortise or tenon (I used a tenon in the past) correctly. I'm hoping my improved technique will help overcome that problem this time.

Then I start shaping the outside of the bowl. This does not go terribly well at first. I get a few bad catches, like before. I get a chunk tore out of the blank that I have to try to fix. So far it's looking like it always does. Then I decide to slow down the lathe, and switch to the carbide scraper, and take very light passes, and things start going a little better. I didn't get any pictures of the early parts of the build, because I expected this to be a test bowl, that would probably fail.

Before long, the bowl started to take shape. But the shape was very boring. Since I sort of expected this bowl to fail, I decide to experiment with a technique that I have seen done, and wanted to try- copper inlay. It's actually quite simple, in theory. I used a detail gouge to turn a small groove around the circumference of the piece. Then I used CA glue to glue a piece of solid copper wire into the groove. Once the glue was set I used a carbide tool to gently scrape the bulk of the excess copper away, then I switched to sand paper. Copper is soft, so it can be turned pretty much like wood. It also sands just like wood. You just sand the piece until the copper wire ends up flush with the surface of the piece. Unfortunately, just as I was about finished, the wire flew off at high speed and stuck me in the stomach. The heat from the sanding had softened the glue.

I decided to try again, this time, using epoxy instead of CA. The epoxy should be less susceptible to the heat buildup. I also put a second groove in, about a half inch from the first. I mixed up some quick set epoxy and spread it over the piece, pushing it into the grooves. Then I used masking tape to help hold the wire in the groove while the epoxy set. I also used electrical tape over top of the masking tape, so that the stretchy-ness of the vinyl tape would add some compression and keep the wire fitted snugly down in the groove.

Once the epoxy was cured, I removed the tape. I slowed the lathe down to lessen the heat, just in case. Then I started sanding down the excess epoxy and the top half of the copper wire. Success! It looked amazing! Now, if I could just finish the inside of the bowl without screwing it up. This is about the point where I started taking pictures. The success of the copper inlay gave me hope that this bowl might not turn out so bad after all.

I finished sanding the outside of the bowl and applied a couple of coats of Shine Juice before un-chucking the piece and turning it around. Then I put he jaws in the mortise and using reverse pressure, snugged them up tight.  I had never done a reverse mounting before, so I was hoping for the best.

The next step was to hog out as much material from the inside of the bowl as possible, using a forstner bit. I set the bit into my Jacobs chuck, in the tail stock, and very slowly and carefully, started drilling out the inside of the bowl.  The bowl is a little more than seven inches in diameter, but the biggest hole I can make with a forstner bit is two and a half inches. Drilling this out was tedious, and slow and made a lot of smoke, but I got it done.

Now, I just had to widen the hole with the gouges. I decided to just use the carbide tools, hoping they would lessen the chances of getting a bad catch. I started with the round carbide bit, but found out that the square one seemed to do a better job, and was less prone to catches and tear-out.

I was very careful and took my time, making very shallow passes with the tool. It took forever, but I managed to get the inside hollowed out. Then, I was just about done, and I decided to try to make the bowl wall a little bit thinner, and BAM! - I got a catch bad enough to make me shut the lathe down in a hurry. I could tell something broke by the way it caught. looking at the piece, the side wall had cracked and a big chunk was about to fall out. Fortunately. all the pieces were still there, so I gently massages them back into place as best as I could, and started sealing up the cracks and gaps with copious amounts of CA glue.

After about a half hour of repair effort, I was finally satisfied that the cracks were all filled. I was too afraid to try to smooth out the excess glue with the carbide tool, or to try to make the wall any thinner, so I decided to put away the tools and start sanding. I had a LOT of sanding to do. The inside of the bowl was still really rough, and the CA glue was mounded up thick over the cracks. It probably took me over an hour to sand it down to an acceptable level.

After a crap-ton of sanding, I put several more coats of Shine Juice on, inside and out. Then, just for goods measure, I rubbed the surface with a block of carnuba wax and buffed it with a paper towel.

Ta-Da! Finished. What was only going to be a practice bowl, and which had a near fatal blow out, turned out to be my best bowl yet. The mortise worked, the copper inlay worked, the repair job worked. And this one even looks less like a flower pot and more like a cereal bowl. I was just about to give up on bowl making, but now I am less discouraged.

 .
 .
.
.