How to Make This Sign Challenge

[Tim Bateson]

I hope the moderators will allow this little challenge, as I want to learn as well.

This isn't my forte, so... The person who can best explain how to reproduce this but with the details below - I will link that person up with the client. I will need to place a hard date - Sunday - Oct 4th, 8pm EDT.

Item Details:
18” W by 12” Tall
Material: Engraved Brass/Bronze or Aluminum with Pigments
Engraved with Raised Lettering and Dog Tags
Full Colors on Text and Dog Tags
Recreate Border According Reference Logo
Reproduce Aged Finish of Original Logo

[Joe Pelonio]

I'm not interested in the job, but that will be an expensive one. I would send out the material, cast bronze, from Gemini. Engraving out the background that deep is a lot of time and hard on the tool. Then airbrush the background aged finish, and hand paint the lettering/graphics. They could also paint the raised letters but I'd prefer doing it after the background. The price would be about 90% less if it could be laser cut/glued up acrylic rather than real metal.

[Dan Hintz]

Definitions are loose, soooo...

I'd look at some brass shimstock pressed to look like the plate (a wood form could be milled much faster than metal). Real bolt heads, real dog tags, painted milled letters.

[Scott Shepherd]

I'd have Gemini make the entire piece with the raised letters, etc (or make it on our CNC router), paint with with modern masters paint (or similiar) and roll on. The problem is what you are showing is a backpiece, not a sign. The sign is supposed to go inside the frame and hide all the bolts.

That's a VERY expensive sign to make. You are looking at well over $1,200 to make that sign, in my opinion. That's one of those jobs where you spend a ton in materials, like different paints, etc just to get started.

[Paul Phillips]

I'll ask one of my sales people to plug in the numbers, I know I can do it out of Aluminum or Acrylic, difficult one offs and faux finishing is our specialty! Steve's right though, not going to be cheap, and without the actual piece to compare to, matching the finish is a crap shoot depending on how detail oriented the customer is, never fails, you spend hours trying to get it to look what you think is perfect and as close to the picture as you can and they say, "it doesn't match!"

[Ross Moshinsky]

Gemini won't do the job well. We had them do a project for a client and it was supposed to look rough like a manhole. We sent the artwork over and needed their artists to do the rest. The result was something very polished and we needed something "rough".

Projects like this are difficult because there are two ways to make these and neither are cheap.

1. Make it like a prop. This means using materials that are easy to machine and finish, like HDU, but are all fake. This isn't cheap but more people do this type of work than you think.

2. Make it with real materials. To me this should be made one of two ways.

One way would be to make it out of a solid piece of aluminum. This will be expensive as it will take a good amount of tooling time. It also won't be easy to finish because it's so many finishes, one on top of the other.

The easier way would be to make it in parts and assemble it after. Make the base frame. Add the nuts. Finish it. Then out of another piece of material, cut the letters, tags, ect. Paint them. Then apply them to the frame. This will likely be the cheapest and easiest method of doing this project but I have no idea if it would be acceptable.

[Joe Pelonio]

I'd have Gemini make the entire piece with the raised letters, etc (or make it on our CNC router), paint with with modern masters paint (or similiar) and roll on. The problem is what you are showing is a backpiece, not a sign. The sign is supposed to go inside the frame and hide all the bolts.

That's a VERY expensive sign to make. You are looking at well over $1,200 to make that sign, in my opinion. That's one of those jobs where you spend a ton in materials, like different paints, etc just to get started.

That's about what I figured on the price, the kind where you give the customer a quote and they decide to have you make it in plastic instead.

[Tim Bateson]

Thanks for the information. Sounds like no one really wants this one?