Issue link: https://nbm.uberflip.com/i/1451373
G R A PH I C S - PR O.C O M 2 0 2 2 J U N E G R A P H I C S P R O 5 5 THE BUILD With three steel rods holding the signs together, little opportunity for warping is possible and no gaps between the boards would exist. I made a drilling template of 1/8" steel plate plus a small but very ac- curate square that could be screwed to the wooded table of our old drill press. It was very important that the drilling was ac- curately placed and totally perpendicular so that each board would align with the others. On the drill press, each hole was drilled just a bit past halfway through the lumber, then the drill template was moved to the opposite edge of a board, and it was drilled again. Finally, the boards were drilled all the way through with a longer and slightly larger bit, just over 3/8" diameter. I had all the lettering waterjet cut from .125 bare aluminum, and I configured the cut le so small letters were not lost to the bottom of a waterjet tank. Letters were connected to other letters by thin lines which would be trimmed o later. No letters were lost by cutting them this way, and there were many, many letters which were required to apply the text to ve dierent signs plus one duplication. First, I clipped o the connecting tabs, and buzzed the burrs o each letter with a small hand grinder. en, they were all drilled with mounting holes and each hole was countersunk. Then, each item was prepped for powder coating by etching each surface with ber disk with the same small grinder. But there were many, many items, and most of them quite small. To facilitate coating, multiple items were daisy chained together with electric fence wire, and these "chains" of pieces were temporarily tacked to panels of corrugat- ed plastic so they would not get tangled together. A beautiful dark green powder by Cardinal Powders was applied at the powder coating shop. Very importantly, we powder coated all the small #6 X 1" stainless steel screws that All metal parts were drilled and countersunk and buffed clean for powder coating. Above: To help hang these many small parts for powder coating, several items would be daisy chained together with electric fence wire. Right: Before sending parts to the powder coating shop, more than 300 stainless steel screws were put in a holder so they could be coated to match.