Product Recommendations and Suppliers

[srwtlc]

I have a customer that wants some white Victorian style brackets and valances made for a porch. The samples they showed me were made from white polyurethane (that's what the catalog said). I've never looked into or worked with such a product, but I know many of you have and do in your day to day operations. What would your recommendations be and who are some suppliers (I'm in west central Wisconsin)? I'm thinking of 1" (prefered) or 3/4" thick material. White of course, because they don't want to have to paint them.

Thanks,
Scott

[Brady Watson]

Scott,
In many cases those scroll brackets are cast polyurethane foam with nothing more than a nice coat of paint on them. My lumber supplier has a few of them in the showroom and I was initially suprised that they were foam...and that they were $64 a piece.

Theoretically you could carve something like this out of 15 or 18# sign foam to achieve the same results + finishing them off with oneshot or similar paint. Another option may be that intecel product that was recently mentioned on here. Casting in polyurethane resin would be too costly depending on volume...unless you use fillers to stretch the material.

I wouldn't go the casting route unless they require over 2 dozen identical pieces. The cost of making a mold and time required to understand how to properly cast foam (a unique technique because of expansion) isn't justified unless you are doing a number of them.

-Brady

[duke conrad (Unregistered Guest)]

azek, is a white cellular pvc material. it mills great.

[robtown]

Try Sintra, or Komatex for a heavier duty alt to sign foam.

[srwtlc]

It looks like the PVC stuff is what I'm thinking of. The samples that I looked at weren't cast, but cut. Most products I've checked on are less than 3/4" thick, except Sintra, which shows a 19mm product. I need to do approximately 20 pieces (10" x 10" and some 6" x 30").

[robtown]

I got a 1" (or 25mm)product called "Vycom Celtec", similar to Sintra or Komatex, from AIN plastics. It came in a 4'x10' sheet and cost 229.00