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Sign-It Signs Goes On Point With Distinctive Inlaid Compass

Project under plate glass at Canadian historic site

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In 2001 – early in my ST career – I enjoyed visiting Sign-It Signs’ (Williamstown, ON, Canada) former shop near Cornwall, ON. I don’t believe I’ve ever visited a cleaner, more efficiently run shop than Noëlla Cotnam and then-partner Nancy Beaudette’s operation. In 2008, Sign-It moved to a 19th-Century schoolhouse that received a 30 x 100-ft. add-on that provided 4,500 sq. ft. – an ideal, sign-fabrication setting. The three-employee shop also maintains www.farmsigns.com, which, you guessed it, fabricates rustic roadside signs for farms across North America and beyond. Its scope of work often transcends conventional signage – its animal sculptures for Founding Farmers, a Washington, DC restaurant that support sustainable agriculture, provided a prime example.
The small shop ambitiously developed signage, displays, artifact cases, sculptures and other environmental graphics for the Ft. Wellington National Historic Site, which resides along the St. Lawrence River in Prescott, ON. Originally constructed during the War of 1812, Ft. Wellington has been well maintained for more than two centuries, and attracts approximately 12,000 annual visitors. Parks Canada administered the new visitor center’s construction, and awarded the job to Sign-It. Parks Canada’s exhibit designer, Susan Quenneville, rendered a rough pencil sketch of the design intent, and left Cotnam’s shop in charge of the rest of the job’s execution.
The most iconic of Fort Wellington’s environmental-graphic elements is its 5-ft.-diameter, 3-in.-thick, floor-inlaid compass with historic imagery that commemorates Canada’s days as a British colony. Cotnam devised the compass pieces by creating vector art using Gerber Composer® software, which entailed calculating the layers and thicknesses, to create a precise template that helped the concrete contractor determine the correct surface area to leave for the compass to fill the floor.
“That’s extremely tight-tolerance engineering to consider even before beginning to fabricate the piece,” she said. “Also, park officials requested that the digitally printed compass background be changeable in the future. All the carved parts sit on top of the print, and they’re under a ½-in.-thick, plate-glass cover, embedded with a foam gasket, and sealed with black silicone applied with a caulking gun.”
Next, Sign-It fed the files into its Gerber Sabre 408 CNC router. The shop cut the parts using 2-in.-thick, 20-lb. PrecisionBoard® HDU that Cotnam carved with sandpaper, files, rasps and gouges, and detailed to look like weather-beaten wood using various colors of Benjamin Moore acrylic housepaint and glazes.
Then, she inlaid incise-carved letters into the carved compass’ rounded-over, outer frame. Sign-It coated these letters with Modern Masters’ dark-bronze, metallic paint, and then sprayed on a chemical activator that created an aged look.
The compass points were constructed from 1.5-in.-thick, 20-lb. PrecisionBoard. Fabrication involved scanning and tracing the points’ shapes before roughing out their forms on the Sabre. Precise detailing required smoothing surfaces with rasps, files, gouges and sandpaper.
While creating the compass’ background image, the designer inadvertently input backwards compass numerals into the graphics (another vendor produced the prints). A visitor complained, and Sign-It promptly repaired the problem. After she’d cracked the silicone seal and carefully removed the plate glass, Cotnam removed all of the components, which were secured using 3M VHB tape, inserted a corrected print and meticulously resealed the glass cover.
“I live for these kind of challenges,” she said. “I get so excited figuring out mechanical issues, and I get carried away with carving and painting.”
 

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