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2-tom bovey signature1.jpg (353.57 KiB) Viewed 16817 times
I always hesitate to post my own work but in the spirit of this site and in memory of the amazing work that once decorated the Black Lion Pub in London I thought I'd share what I tried a few years ago as the work of these craftsmen was no small influence on me.
It was a winter lull at the shop and I had a few planks of basswood lying around and was into trying out an "almost" copy of one of the signs from The Black Lion. After studying these and the ones at the Salisbury (in near perfect condition) by S. Jones and Company in Kings Cross London. I am almost certain that they were using some sort of router on a gantry much like a computer driven machine. I was using hand routers and ran into the problem of not having the nice even background like the examples I'd seen and am going to include a few of the photos I used as reference.
I abbreviated mine to Brandy as I only had 6ft planks and this was intended to be just for the fun of it. On the one from The Salisbury (spirits) you can see what I thought was a punched background and made a couple for this purpose from hardened steel. You can see on the original "B" a crack going through the background and the letter which tells me this was likely a single piece of wood rather than cut letters applied....besides to do otherwise would require an enormous bandsaw! Anywho...there's a little of my investigational ramblings.
Attachments
e-salisbury sign1 detail.jpg (148.43 KiB) Viewed 16808 times
e-Brandy1-14.jpg (144.32 KiB) Viewed 16811 times
e-brandy4.jpg (180.92 KiB) Viewed 16805 times
e-Brandy lion1.jpg (145.43 KiB) Viewed 16810 times
e-Black Lion Brandies2.jpg (148.84 KiB) Viewed 16789 times
Hey don't feel bad about posting your work. I certainly can't imagine that I am the only one on the forum who enjoys seeing your stuff. Keep it coming So the overall size of your piece is about 6 foot by 18 inches?
Last edited by Ron Berlier on Wed Oct 15, 2014 11:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Hi Gents...I've seen some old pieces with punched backgrounds before and they seem to be in good condition. There are quite a few available from woodworking supply places but am pretty sure I made this one. Have a picture from Peter Devine's which I believe is the same punch.
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I have another in mind for the next time I'm prepared for a couple of hours of torture (it's noisy) on anything of substantial size. Brandy was only a 2x6' or so but the Devine's was closer to 30'
I'm going to make a point of trying to be more forth coming...thanx for that Erik. It's easy to just dismiss ones own work when I see the quality of the other posts here and on Facebook. Also a certain "shyness" on my side is at play.
So the overall size of your piece is about 6 foot by 18 inches?
Denver Chapter of the Letterheads