Timber Signs Builds Elegant Sign for German Miniature-Vehicle Museum

Located in Sonthofen, Germany, amidst the picturesque Bavarian Alps, the Mini Mobil Museum chronicles the history of transportation through an exhibit of more than 18,000 scale-model replicas that commemorate more than century of innovation in automotive and aviation engineering.
Sonthofen, and its surrounding Obergallau region, invest heavily in tourism as a vital economic cog. Therefore, it’s a region replete with attractions and cultural institutions. As past International Sign Contest galleries will attest, Timber Signs, which plies its trade in the Bavarian city of Ofterschwang, produces some of the world’s finest 3-D signage. Manfred Didier and Marcus Goebels, Timber’s co-owners, designed the double-sided bracket sign using Gerber Scientific Products’ Omega and ArtPath software. They fabricated the 3-D layers using Dunafoam® HDU, and produced the backdrop on a Gerber Edge® 2 thermal-transfer printer.
They shaped the panel on a Gerber Sabre 408 CNC router, and refined its texture with Pfeil Swiss-made chisels. Its vibrant colors required a combination of Jay Cooke’s primer, acrylic-latex housepaint and 1Shot® lettering enamels to paint the raised letters by hand, and airbrush on the prismatic letters to create a fading effect. Timber Signs carved the pointing hand manually, then handpainted it with a 1Shot faux-finish that yields an aging effect. Didier and Goebels installed the sign on a steel pole, which was originally installed by a railroad company, using a scissor lift and Festo power tools.