This was a fun project! The rock is sculpted with fiberglass reinforced concrete with an internal steel armature. The reindeer on top was fabricated the same way, with the addition of some sculpting epoxy for details, and then set on top of the rock.
The G is made up of nine layers of plywood cut on our cnc router and glued together to make it 6.5″ thick. The G is 27″ tall. After hours of sanding it was ready to be primed and painted. But first we added some Coastal Enterprise’s TSF-45 to create some texture and interest.
The wood base is hollow and holds an electric motor attached to a shaft with bearings that connects to the bottom of the G with a welded plate. Internal LEDs illuminate the 1/2″ thick acrylic.
All in all this pieces has close to 200 hours into it. It’s home will be in our office for customers to see. Enjoy the following photos and video. Thanks for looking!
Update 8/12/20:
We won! Holy smokes, what a surprise! Unfortunately the sign expo was canceled so we didn’t get to show it off in person, but through a virtual voting platform Signs of the Times Magazine tallied the votes from nation wide readers of their magazine and we took the win.
Here a few carved signs we’ve done over the year. We started in the early 2000’s with a chisel and a hammer. It didn’t take long for us to invest in a hand held electric router ($15 at a garage sale). Fast forward 10 years and now we do most of our carved signs with a 3-axis CNC router. It’s fast, accurate, and we can actually be more creative with it.
First the signs are designed in Adobe Illustrator and then the 3D CAD modeling happens in Vectric Aspire. When the tools paths are created they are sent from the PC to the router and the magic begins.
Our two most common material to carve are Western Red Cedar and High Density Urethane (HDU). Cedar is great when the customer wants to leave some natural wood exposed (clear coated or transparent stain) and HDU is a better choice if the entire sign will be painted. HDU is more stable and less prone to expanding and contracting and checking.
Enjoy browsing the following images!
Travelers driving through Leavenworth are sure to notice the towns unique charm and Gibbs Graphics is proud to do its part towards adding to that beauty.
Large freestanding signs along highway 2 help to create the initial impression of \”Bavarian Village\”. We take pride in creating signs that embody Leavenworth\’s Bavarian theme.
Gibbs Graphics creates sculptures, store fronts, props, parade floats, exhibits and themed environments. Please see examples below of some of our recent projects.
In an effort to stay ahead and learn new sign making techniques Gibbs Graphics has new piece of a equipment, a CNC router! We now have the ability to create compelling signs that would be impossible to achieve using traditional techniques.
There is a world class nutcracker museum in Leavenworth and many people walked by the front door without taking notice. Our aim was to change that.
We painted the wall around the front door, changed the wooden trim around the door and window, built a nutcracker sign bracket with a nice 3-D sign, created an impressive 3-D convex sign above the front door, and constructed a 6\’ tall concrete replica of an nutcracker from the 1500\’s.
We\’re proud of the outcome!
This projecting sign we made for Andreas Keller Restaurant is built with a 5\” thick cedar circle, with an HDU scroll that has incised lettering carved and gilded with 23K gold leaf. The steel bracket is custom made and also has accents of gold leaf.
Our new sign along the highway is up! Here are some photos of the process.
This now takes the lead as the largest sign we\’ve ever painted. The Cascadian Fruit Shippers warehouse is located just South of Pybus Market in Wenatchee and is the oldest fruit warehouse in the area.
About a year after we refurbished this paint job, the North section of the warehouse caught on fire and so we were hired back to redo the work the following year all over again!
