Speaking from Experience: Viking delight

WELCOME!

It is hard to believe that it was almost ten years ago I witnessed a CNC router in action for the very first time. I was fascinated and simply had to have one! Although I had been in the creative end of the three dimensional sign business for most of my life I didn't really know what I would do with one of these machines - but I just knew it could do fantastic stuff.

Along with the CNC router I discovered the wonderful material called Precision Board and the glues, primers and other companion products they offer. Since then we have gone through many tons of the material using it in most signs and projects we tackle. This journal will chronicle our many adventures both past, present and future. I'll talk from the perspective of someone who pushes these products to the creative limit on a daily basis. I'll be adding to the stories two or three times each week. -dan

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Viking delight

Our next big project looks to be a fun one. We've been asked to build two forty-foot long viking ships which will go to Dubai. It's a challenge as they will have to be built in sections to fit inside shipping containers. And the assembly has to be simple enough for someone else to do the install. Our job will end when the pieces are loaded into the truck on our property.

We are working with other vendors and all of the pieces need to fit together seamlessly. To make the job easier we decided to first built a scale half model of the ship. Everything is more easily worked out at this scale, which makes the real build a whole lot easier.

To make the model in perfect scale the platform was first designed in EnRoute. Then the steel plate ship deck was cut on the MultiCam plasma cutter. The profile of the keel was cut from Precision Board and the model was assembled and a final shape was hand sculpted. Then we applied a thin coat of Abracadabra Sculpting epoxy and all the the details were carved in before it set. As usual base colours were applied and then a series of glazes to make it all come alive.

We finished the model about two hours before the critical client meeting and it went extremely well.
Now we are on to the real thing at full size.