Olufson Designs / surface gilding

Here's 3 letters in production succession. The one to the left has been painted with a gold colored enamel and is lightly sanded. The one in the middle is then brushed with a slow drying oil size and a bit of color added. The one to the right is then gilded with 23K gold leaf.

Here's my workstation for gilding the letters. To the left I have books of gold sliced into various widths. To the upper right is empty packaging I've used up.  To the lower right are full books of gold. 

Another perspective.

This is a crazy mishap. After all the gold is applied, it is pushed into the slightly sticky size with a large wad of cotton. The overlaps are lightly rubbed with cotton and fall off. I collect these on a clean sheet of butcher paper and they are called skewings. I keep them brushed into a pile and they are useful for filling in corners and cracks. I use the brush at top to lift & deposit the skewings. While I'm laying gold onto the sides of the letters, this one was standing on edge, rolled part way around and plopped face down, right into my skewing pile. Oh crap!! 

A galaxy of stars. The gold bits were clean except for many shed brush hairs. Get rid of those first. The nature of surface gilding is that 1 layer only of gold sticks to the tacky oil size. The size is much like a slow drying varnish that maintains its tackiness for a long time. This thin gold is quite malleable. The solution was to lay more gold over the surface and work it into the size, filling in all the micro voids. It took lots of finger tamping. The soft pads of the fingers are perfect for pressing gold into the size. The e ended up completely covered in gold. It burnished (shined) up nicely with  a vigorous yet gentle rubbing of cotton. In the end it is hard to tell which e took the fall. Whew.

I acquired the signkit of a deceased sign painter from his wife. She contacted me, hoping to sell me the gold which the kit contained. I offered her a bit more and got the whole kit, filled with a stash of new lettering brushes, miscellaneous tools and stacks of gold. This is one of the books of gold, which is quite old. The book is standardized with 25 leaves, each at 3 3/8" x 3 3/8". Each leaf is loose and can fall right out of the tissue like pages.

Here's a closeup of the logo border. Only the sides and top surface have been brushed with the size. I'm using wax paper as a carrier to transport and apply the gold. The goal was to go up, over and down without any holidays. Pinholes, cracks and voids of any kind are known as holidays.

Another goal was to get a clean tear in the gold at the edge of the size. This leaves me with a large usable section of leaf left on the wax paper. The ragged edge above was what the average tear looked like.

Here is one perfect leaf, started and not yet rolled over the top and down the backside.

It is slow going and there is a lot of gold to lay on this large piece.

I only have so much time before the size becomes too dry and the gold will not stick. They make a fast and a slow drying oil size. I'm using 1/2 of each. I brushed it on in the morning and am laying gold in the evening. It was summer and by the time I was close to the end, I had to work extra hard to get the gold to adhere. Waiting longer does create a more brilliant gild though.

The small wrinkles and bubbles will get tamped down with the large wad of cotton. The loose overlaps will tear off and become skewings with gentle side to side rubbing of the cotton. 

Notice the small holidays to the right side of the corner that need to be filled.

The gold is all applied, but not yet burnished.

Ok, enough closeups.

Oops, another holiday on top of that corner. You don't want to start burnishing and stick your cotton into the size. It becomes a fuzzy mess.

There's that neat word 'sign' again. The mirror quality of the gloss black background makes the letters appear to be twice as thick. A nice inexpensive way to get double your investment in gold.

The shine of gold leaf when it reflects light causes one to turn and look to see what's going on. When caught by ones periphery vision, it's hard not to react with a glance. This assures that every passerby will view the sign. Besides its beautiful qualities, this functionality makes a gold leafed sign worth its weight in _____. Oooh, that was so bad!  :)

Olufson Designs / fabrication & install

Here's the finished sign. This is Sean Olufson's 3rd or so location and he's very glad to be downtown. He had the logo and typeface already established. I took great liberties chopping up, rearranging and scaling the parts to create this design layout. 

The frame that everything attaches to. It is 2" aluminum angle, 1/8" thick. The vertical placement against the front of the marquee was worked out in advance. Then the attaching brackets were designed and determined the odd pattern.

The parts for the logo and letters were cut out on a cnc router. The black 'Alupanel' (a 3/16" pre-painted aluminum sandwiched substrate with a plastic core) drops into and fits perfectly down in the cut out HDU (1.5" high density urethane foam board). I've already rounded over the square corners of the HDU with a 3/4" quarter round bit in the router.

The HDU frame that borders the sign was built up from 2 pieces.

These lengths were milled to the above cross section shape on a tablesaw. I've marked the side where it needs carved out underneath to accommodate the head of the pop rivet. 2, 4' x 8' Alupanel sheets have been cnc router cut to shape and pop riveted to the frame. The Alupanel comes with a protective film which will later come off.

The HDU border is being glued to the aluminum sign frame. While still clamped, it's also receiving stainless screws with locknuts.

Pre-assembly of the top part of the border. The two pieces glued together to make the thickness of the top arch were also cut on the cnc router. I hand routed the inside notch of the top curve with a very scary straight cut router bit. It had 2 1/2" of cutter exposed. I jigged together some assembly of a router table for this operation.

The HDU is adhered to the aluminum with silicone. It's adhered to itself with urethane glue at each new butt joint. Then holes are drilled, countersunk and bolted.

More of the same. It was a long way around this sign.

The underside is notched out to fit over the pop rivet.

Making plugs for the countersunk bolt holes.

I'm using 'Gorilla" brand urethane glue. It looks like honey and is activated by water. It foams up and expands while drying. The plugs had to be clamped or the glue would push them right out.

Flush cutting the excess with a Japanese trim saw.

The cap, or roof is being glued onto the border. If you look closely, you can see a pencil line that marks the edge of my glue area. This much glue will expand to be enough. I'm using HDU that came from a 1 1/2" board in the green color and a 2" board in yellow.

The yellow HDU was glued up from different pieces in the inventory pile.

The roof, or cap, overhangs 1" on 3 sides. Flush on the back.

These small blocks were glued on the backside to trap the Alupanel top arch between the lip of the front. No pop rivets could go along the top of the aluminum frame because they would be visible from the front.

Once all glued, the corners routed off with a 1/4 round bit, and sanded; the HDU gets painted with primer. I even mask the backside to make it look good. Must impress the boss.

Suitable for framing!? .....Maybe if you're a Letterhead. Here's more wallpaper for your desktop.

Here's all the letters ready for multiple coatings. To start, I apply 2 coats of thick, water based, high build primer. It goes on like yogurt, but brushes out fairly smooth. You can then wet sand with fine grit sandpaper to get a very smooth polished finish.

What a great looking shirt.

The backs of the letters are painted with enamel. The ends of the two 2x4's are connected so I can move this entire batch of letters to a different part of the shop to dry.

An appropriate sized brush for the job, a size #28 lettering quill for maximum efficiency. Old school sign shops used real paint; it's so much more fun than vinyl.

Back on the computer, I gave the graphics a 1/10" outline and cut it from this easily removable 'paint mask' vinyl. This one large temporary application tells me where to attach all the letters and the logo. There is a seam right down the middle, between the 2 sheets of black Alupanel. 6 pop rivets there get covered up and hidden with the logo applique.

While my daughter Eliza is home from the U of O, and my brother Scott is visiting, It's a good time to take on a task that requires many hands. We're bolting the logo on. Eliza is amazingly strong and did not let the sign fall. Scott was told "don't dare let the screwdriver touch the gold". His arm was solid as a rock (but his knees were knockin').

This hardware gets covered up with the cutout black Alupanel I showed earlier on.

There is one pop rivet in the center of each half. Both are strategically placed behind a letter. A couple turns by hand with this bit provides enough relief for the rivet head. The vinyl mask is folded over to provide a tab for easy removal. Once the gilded letter is attached, I don't want to scratch it with my fingernail.

The sign is temporarily clamped in place, with a least one bolt on each side. Tim Foley and I are caught telling jokes. Two other friends, Beto Sattel and Dave Anderson, have just left after helping to boost it up in place. Beto is a close friend and neighbor; he helped deliver the sign in his large Isuzu box truck. I was in the back, standing and holding the sign, in the dark with the doors closed, while he drove. Glad my shop is close to downtown.

Tim's working on his half, drilling a hole, fastening a bolt, and pulling a clamp; one connection point at a time.

I'm not working on my half; I'm taking silly pictures instead. The 2 long lengths of angle which are bolted to the marquee were installed the day before. The large lag screws go into 4" wide beams, which have a very random spacing between them. We climbed around up inside an attic space, where the other half of the beams were exposed, and recorded the measurements between them. Then transposed just one mark to the outside that we could measure the rest from. Working blind, we hit each beam with the first pilot hole.

Bridging the right angle brackets to the 2 long parallel lengths are 6 short 8" pieces of the same 2" angle. The angles are reversed to provide a flat point of contact. There's a small amount of adjustability in the height of these. We leveled all 6 on a horizontal plane using a rotating laser.

More short lengths of angle were attached to the sign frame to provide attachment points for the lighting, yet to come.

Major bling!  The gloss black finish becomes a black mirror, adding to the bling factor. One of the first things Sean, the proprietor & boss, notices and points out is the light coming through the gap just above the logo. A piece of black tape on the backside solved the problem and the seam disappeared.

I think all of mankind is attracted to gold.

Oh boy, more signs. I had to add this pic.

The storefront.

The sign at night, after the lights went up. It does a great job of helping light up 1/2 the block.