I made one of these special "Endeavour to Persevere" signs for my good friend Mr. Dickinson.
Well, I wanted him to have it. It was a present. But after I thought about it for a long time, I decided I needed one for myself. But rather than the measly 54" long version, I decided to make mine 94". I'm going to do mine a bit defferent than how I made Mr. Dickinson's. Crossed my mind to share the step with ya. Some of these techniques are a bit experimental (for me), but I think they should work. I'll update this post as I go...success, or failure.
This piece was an inspiration to take down to Mr. Dickinson's at the last Memorial Conclave, so there was no time to waste. I whipped out my trusty Centennial Collection CD I got from Mike Jackson, and pieced together this art. (You would be unable to see the detail if I showed the whole thing, so here's a section.)
Do you like to weed? Only took about 4 hours to weed this badboy! Good thing I was doing it on a Mental Health day, otherwise, I might have got a bit grumpy. Those buffalo ribs we had for lunch helped a lot! So what you see weeded here is going to be slightly depth carved via sandblasting with my extra-fine 220 aluminum oxide. ...Time to get dusty... well, maybe after a nice sushi lunch!
Here's a detail of the light sandcarving. ...sushi was good...
Now comes the one of the steps that I have never done before. I am proceeding to do a Lead Nitrate deposition into the sandcarved portions, leaving the sandblast mask on the glass.
Here it is during the deposition process.
Now it's done. The deposition worked over the mask. The mask stayed adhered to the glass. Success #1!
Next, the lead deposition is coated with asphaltum. I sprayed the asphaltum, which goes down into the sandcarving better than brushing.
Next, was to weed out the detail portion of the border design...another 3 hours. It wasn't so bad, in the newly renovated Green Door Saloon, which is now an art studio. Watched, "A Town Called *ell" while I weeded. Now onto silvering...
Here it is during the silver deposition process.
This is the resulting silver deposition revealed as the solutions are drained off into the collection tub.
The back of the silver is now coated with the same spray applied asphaltum varnish.
Here it is from the front.
Here's a detail of the lead deposition over the sandcarving with the design detail done in silver mirror. So far, so good!
So now I peeled out the letter centers, and with some white vinyl applied to the front, I airbrushed a transparent blue glaze fade to the tops of the letters. The glaze is tinted shellac. After the glaze dried, I coated the rest of the letter with a light mist of clear shellac.
I proceeded to apply a liberal coat of 50/50 mixture of WW Window Spar varnish and Damar varnish. I then sprinkled it with a mix of glass glitter, silver flitters, and a product from Michael's Craft Store called Diamond Dust (which looks like a very sparkley white glass smalt). I shake it over the area with one of those shaker jars they have the red peppers in at the pizza place. I tip it up and shake off the loose, then reapply and let dry.
The excess glitter is dusted off, sealed with a coat of shellac, then backed with metalic silver spray paint.
Here is the glitter letter center with airbrushed fade from the front.
On Mr. Dickinson's sign, I hand painted a stop line for the drop shaddow and had proceeded accordingly with this piece. I then realized I could continue with my peel and finish technique for the drop shaddow, and paint the outline last. So I created a pounce pattern of the drop shaddow and pounced it over the existing vinyl and hand cut it out. It would've been easier to have it already cut out by the computer, but now I can at least continue as though it had been. What I'll do is peel out all of a particular plane of the letter shaddow, gold size them, then apply a mica powder. I'm going to try spraying on the gold size. Then I'll peel the next section of the drop shaddow, and repeat. I will do a blended mica powder on the curved areas at the end.
Here, the bottom sections of the letter shade have been weeded and OneShot gold size applied with my airbrush. I added about 25% Naptha as thinner to get the size to flow through the airbrush.
After letting the size set-up for a bit over an hour, I pounced on Nu-Antique Silver mica powder, using Rick Glawson's trick of using a baby sock for a pounce bag. Slicker than a heel hound! Now I'll weed the next section and do the same, but with a different tone of mica powder.
Here it is from the front after the second tone of mica powder was applied. The vertical sides of the drop shaddow are done in Hi-Lite Super Gold. This second application was also applied right over the first, and the next one will be done over these two.
It took 4 sessions of applying the various sections of the drop shaddow on the letters. Here it is from the front after it's all done. The background mask is still on the glass. This will be removed, and an outline will be painted around the drop shaddow. Then the background will be applied. With this technique, the outline could also be part of the computer cut mask, but I'm going to just hand paint it in.
Here's a detail of the drop shaddow done in mica powders.
Here's a close up of the letter "R".
The mica powder is now backed up with white spray paint. Then the remaining mask is removed.
I then outlined the letters with the dropshadow in black. This could have been part of the mask, peeled out and blocked in prior to the removal of the background mask, but since I didn't do that, I had to outline it by hand.
Here it is from the front...
...and here's a close up. I'll clean up the outline a bit, shellac the whole thing, then I'll be ready to do the background. Aho!
Well, My lovely wife, Karen, came up to Machine to join me for lunch and saw the unfinished "Endeavour" sign in the Green Door Studio in which she said, "You haven't finished that yet?" I told her I was still undecided on the background. As a lot of you know, the background can make, or break, your piece. I debated doing a marble panel, or a blended color panel, or one of Rodderick's crackle panels.... which lead into the thought of smalt background ... like I said, I was undecided. Karen said she thought I should do a white background, pearl white. Sounded like a good idea to me. (I painted the outer portion of glass that was clear, with a gray color, backing up the entire border design as well.)
Rather than simply painting the backgound white, I decied to do a recessed background panel. So I fabricated this backing board.
I cut the wood at a 45 degree angle to give a beveled edge to the recess. The corners align with the inside corners of the border design on the glass.
I then primed the raw wood with Krylon spray primer and gave it a few passes with the steel wool.
After which, I spray painted a base coat of white enamel, followed by a coat of white pearl laquer.
I then built up a frame from some of my rustic 2x4's.
Now, I'm really Jonesin' to put this thing together, but I gotta let the paint dry. The first thing a glass artist needs to learn is to take things easy. So, I'll go do something else and put this together and hang it up tomorrow! ...Don't worry I'll post a picture!
Well, I got it framed up this morning. The pearl white backgournd came out nice.
Got it hung up too! Only way to handle it!
Here's a shot from the office landing.
And now a constant reminder to Endeavour to Persevere... now what should I do....
Do they really make glass that long, or did ya just glue two together 
Denver Chapter of the Letterheads