joe
02-27-2005, 06:26 PM
Greeting friends,
We've been looking over the costs, for us, to produce signs with Incised letters, as compared to raised and it's been interesting. I'm not suggesting our pricing is any kind of a standard though.
Over the past year we have noticed that it takes allmost twice as long to do a raised letter signs as an incised one, and our sales are going in that way due to the cost savings.
We've been using Cedar, Redwood, HDU and Extira, for the most part. Our local Lowes is now stocking very nice 2" rough cedar at a very fair price. We also have been fortunate to have Extira, for smaller panels. HDU is slowly being phased out due to time of finishing and cost. It also takes special care for mounting.
Once a panel has been routed, and painted, it's ready for a quick filling of letters with colored epoxy. We use a big veterinary surrenge to fill the letters. Once filled, a light spray with denatured alchohol, for a glassy finish, and the sign is done.
Router Bits: I'm crazy for hard edged fat letter styles when doing incised. I use a flat 110 or 120 degree bit for visability. Also wide letters may require a thicker board. My bits are only 1.25" at the most, so I have to go to my chisels to chunk out the letter bottoms. I'm not a 3D buy. I don't mind, it's fun.
We've never been able to get Artcam to do acceptable prism letters on thick and thin letters, so we still do them by hand. I think it can be done with a 3D program but would take too long. After twenty years of hand carving, it's effecient.
I guess we still do more raised letter panels that anything else but:
O
We've been looking over the costs, for us, to produce signs with Incised letters, as compared to raised and it's been interesting. I'm not suggesting our pricing is any kind of a standard though.
Over the past year we have noticed that it takes allmost twice as long to do a raised letter signs as an incised one, and our sales are going in that way due to the cost savings.
We've been using Cedar, Redwood, HDU and Extira, for the most part. Our local Lowes is now stocking very nice 2" rough cedar at a very fair price. We also have been fortunate to have Extira, for smaller panels. HDU is slowly being phased out due to time of finishing and cost. It also takes special care for mounting.
Once a panel has been routed, and painted, it's ready for a quick filling of letters with colored epoxy. We use a big veterinary surrenge to fill the letters. Once filled, a light spray with denatured alchohol, for a glassy finish, and the sign is done.
Router Bits: I'm crazy for hard edged fat letter styles when doing incised. I use a flat 110 or 120 degree bit for visability. Also wide letters may require a thicker board. My bits are only 1.25" at the most, so I have to go to my chisels to chunk out the letter bottoms. I'm not a 3D buy. I don't mind, it's fun.
We've never been able to get Artcam to do acceptable prism letters on thick and thin letters, so we still do them by hand. I think it can be done with a 3D program but would take too long. After twenty years of hand carving, it's effecient.
I guess we still do more raised letter panels that anything else but:
O