2014 Dogfish Head Craft Brewery American logo sign project April 12- May 10 2014

When I got an email to make the 50 signs for Dogfish Head I was excited. I love anything stars/Flag related and actually had been wanting to create something with this feel for a while so it came at the perfect time.

I first came up with three various approaches to replicating the DFH American logo in wood at 2 foot by 14 inches. The first approach being a silk screen on flat wood. The second to personally hand rout each one. Or, third, to have a CNC computerized machine cut them out in which I would only have to paint them after they were cut.

We ended up going with the second option which was what I was hoping for because I knew it would look/feel the best as well as be a challenge of my skills. When doing production runs of any type you have to become mechanical and methodical in your approach to the project, trying to make all as similar as possible.

I ordered in 110 feet of wide Poplar boards from Quinn Hardwood and Lumber.  Poplar is a wood still readily available in wide sizes. It's also a very stable wood and great for painting.

I first cut out a template of the positive on a scroll saw as this template would be used  to trace the logo consistently onto all of the boards.

After tracing the logo I used a down cut spiral bit with a Dewalt compact router to freehand rout the design.  This router has a light in the base which makes it great for seeing the wood to be removed.

To hit the deadline, I would need to make 4 signs a night, which typically took over 4 hours. 4 hours of full concentration in a weird universe. The weird universe being that when you wear eye goggles, dust mask and ear protection, you feel very isolated, I imagine, like an astronaut would feel at times.

I had only one shot on each sign to be as perfect as can be. To try to achieve clean crisp stars my arms had to lock and move in an almost robotic fashion to control the torque of router from wanting to run and pull across the wood. Watch video of routing the sign here:

Routing signs for Dogfish Head sign project

I had basically two mountains in front of me every night. The stack of wood that hadn't been routed yet and the routed stack. It's always a great moment when the done pile becomes larger than the "to-do" pile.

After the signs were routed the outside was band sawed to the oval shape. Each sign's background was then hand distressed with a riffler rasp leaving scratches in the wood to begin to create a rustic look.

During the painting process I used three shades of blue for the background to add to a fading rustic look.

 I originally thought painting the shark/stars white would be as simple as taking a paint roller and barely running it across the top. When I did my sample, the white paint was hitting the background as well as running down the sides of the stars, so I had to come up with a new option.

I tried a bunch of different techniques but the fastest and most effective way was a throw back to childhood.  I applied the paint to each star with my index finger. So 50 stars times 50 signs times 3 applications of various whites equaled 7,500 finger painted stars. Needless to say, my finger was pretty sore for many days to follow.

After the white was done I painted the stripes with 3 shades of red. Then sanded through creating a distressed look. Each sign was unique to itself in the way the distressing looked and truly loved each one.

I then aged the white paint with transparent coats of greys to add to the rustic feel. I used a gouge making slight indentations in the blue background as well as going back to the riffler rasp to distress the background more. After a final sand/clean-up they were clearcoated with a matte finish.

I was approached a couple times at the 2014 Analog A GO GO at the Dogfish Head brewery by people who bought these signs including the parents of a gentleman active in the military who has it hanging in the barracks. It's always a great reward to hear stories about where my work ends up. (and hopefully one of these signs pops up on Antiques Roadshow 150 years from now)