Harmans Cheese Carved Sign in Sugar Hill, NH: How a carved wooden sign is made

Back in the Fall of 2007, Brenda Aldrich of Harman's Cheese have me a call about possibly updating their sign.  The timing wasn't quite right for her when she called (but we do love the customers that plan ahead, thanks!) but the project stayed in the back of my mind through the winter, and by the time she called this spring to pull the trigger, we were raring to go on the project.

The sketch above is for a carved, western red cedar sign.  The cheeseboard will be carved in three dimensions (a combination of computer-controlled carving and hand finishing) and then will be realistically painted.

This Sign Story will be a bit unique, as much of it will be told using video.

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The picture above is the "before" of this project.  I have no idea how old this sign is, but I think "really old" covers it pretty well. 

An opportunity like this is what we really enjoy here at Lincoln Sign Company.  There is nothing better than giving a well-established business the ability to update their look and put their best foot forward.  What many business owners fail to realize, is that many of a businesses potential customers size a business up based on their sign, first and foremost.  Why not give them the best possible first impression?  I would like to thank Harman's Cheese in advance for letting us give them a hand with this project.

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Here is the "glue-up" of the sign blank.  We take 2" x 6" boards, and glue them together to make a large, continuous piece of wood for our sign.  The "glue" that we use is West System epoxy, the same glue that boat-makers use.  When I was helping Lee with this glue-up, I managed to get the epoxy all over my pants.  Fantastic!  There is nothing that ruins clothing faster than West Systems!

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Here is what things look like once a sign design goes into our 3-dimensional carving software.  It allows us to tell our computer-controlled router what we want to carve, and how we want to carve it, and it lets us see a "simulation of what the carving will look like.

The red lines in the above screen shot show where the various carving tools will actually be cutting into the surface of the material.  The blue lines show where the tool is raised so it can safely move to carve the next letter without accidentally cutting into the sign surface.

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Here is the sign after the lettering has been carved, and we are getting ready to prime and paint it.  We have masked off the area on the sign where the cheese carving will go.  This is so we get a good, strong bond between the carving and the natural wood of the sign.  This is a much stronger bond than glue on top of paint would be.  We try to do this wherever possible.

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from J.D. / Lincoln Sign Company <jd@signsneversleep.com> to "Harman's Cheese (Brenda)" <cheese@harmanscheese.com> date Wed, May 28, 2008 at 3:59 PM subject update mailed-by gmail.com

Hi Brenda:

I called today and left a message that it looks like we are on track for the installation on Wednesday, June 4th.  Things are a bit crazy here with another project so the date might be bumped up to Tuesday or back to Thursday at the extreme, but I am 95% certain that we are going to be doing it the 4th.

Hopefully you have been following along as we worked on your project.  If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the post, you'll get your first glimpse of the carving that is going to go on the completed sign.

There will be more pictures and video coming up, and that reminds me...  I need to do that small sign for over the door.  I will get started on that tomorrow!


http://signsneversleep.typepad.com/signs_never_sleep/2008/05/harmans-cheese.html

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J D. Iles

Lincoln Sign Company
166 Pollard Rd.
Lincoln, NH 03251

603-745-6658

Fax: 603-962-8522
jd@signsneversleep.com




Here is the finished, carved and painted cheese carving, ready to be laminated onto the sign.

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Here is the sign, installed, and ready for the Lupine Festival.

Comments

[patti]

What a great video! Thanks for posting it. Now I can't wait to see what you do with our Sandpiper sign! :) Keep up the great work.
~Patti & Chris, Medfield MA

[Harman's Cheese]

Thanks for showing us how our sign is being made. One small correction, we've only been in business for 53 years but hope we'll make 100 years!

[J.D. Iles]

Brenda:

Sorry for the mistake. For some reason I had "100 years" stuck in my head.

We are in the middle of painting the 3D carving and are fussing about the colors (as we always do). I need to run out to Abbey Cellars later today to buy some cheese so I can compare the color to what we have (I keep eating all of our color references).

FYI: The 5 year cheese you gave me was terrific!