jalexspringer, Author at Augusta Sign Company

From Raw Cedar to Finished Sign

Towards the end of summer, I received a phone call from a nice lady about making a sign for a farm she had purchased in Rockbridge County where she had hired an architect to build a new home complete with a horse barn. Now that sounds like a dream come true, especially if you love horses the way she does.

Lettering the pinstripe inner border, gray.

She needed to have a sign completed after Christmas. That sounded very doable considering custom wood signs take a little while to design and construct, but usually only about 6-8 weeks after final design approval and any applicable permit approvals are received.

I was super busy with a huge project at Eastern Mennonite University (see link to the recent EMU blog article), so I had to put her project on the back-burner until that project was complete. She was very understanding and willing to wait! I contacted her again before Thanksgiving to see about writing up the new order. I wish all my customers were as creative in design as she was! We started off with an idea I had, but with the customer’s great input, came up with the final idea. The colors were really great together!

I was able to have the cedar panel made up and routed by mid-December and was able to get it sanded, primed, and painted by mid-January. I always enjoy the hand-painting process, even though it is very time consuming. In this case, I primed the entire front, back, and edges of the cedar panel with two coats of white Zinsser primer. After that was good and dry, I applied two finish coats of hand-mixed taupe over the entire front. After the taupe enamel dried, I flipped the sign and painted the back and edges in black enamel. On one-sided signs I like to paint the back first since when I flip the sign, there’s less chance that I can scratch or mar the main background paint for the customer’s sign. I try my best to end up with a professionally-finished sign, hand-painted in my shop in Augusta County, VA.

The sign with background still wet. Cold temperatures in the shop were slowing the drying process, so the sign was brought into the house where things are warmer!

Once the back and edges were good and dry, I flipped the panel and lettered the V-carved lettering “black”; the flat-routed horse artwork “hunter green”; and the V-carved river pinstripe “blue”. To finish it all up, I painted the inset oval V-carved border “gray”.

The completed carved, handpainted cedar sign for Hunters Glen Farm.

The oval sign was approximately 36X24 and would be mounted on a new fence at the corner of the acreage up by the main road, where the roadway to the farm originates. This particular project also included a smaller sign mounted on a post that would be installed near the horse barn. The customer would provide her own installation, which I appreciate now that I am nearing retirement age!! I was able to make the delivery as soon as everything was dry. The temperatures in my shop were so cold, that I opted to bring the sign into my house to make sure it was properly cured.

As I was looking back through my portfolio of sign jobs since restarting the sign business in 2015, I noticed I have done a lot of farm signs. If you own a farm and need a nice iconic wooden sign to grace its entrance, please do not hesitate to call!

Mark Hackley owns Augusta Sign Company, 540-943-9818, mark@augustasigncompany.com

Augusta Sign Company has been busy upgrading signs at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA. Over the last several years I have helped with interior sign upgrades at University Commons Building, and Suter Science Center, along with a complete exterior wayfinding sign replacement! It has been very interesting and rewarding to see the new signage come to life on campus over the last several years.

One of six adjoining track walls, spreading a positive teambuilding message along the entire second floor hallway.

The EMU marketing department has made it easy to keep the school’s branding consistent across campus, and the facilities management department has helped with coordinating all the projects and purchasing the signs if new construction-related. Since I am a small, one man shop with an occasional helper, working with EMU on breaking these larger projects into phases really helped things stay on target over the past two years. It all started with the Suter Science Center. Phase 1 was the first floor which began mid-summer 2021, leading to Phase 2, the second floor right before fall classes resumed. Then there was the high end donor wall for the final dedication later in October. (See previous blog about the donor wall project.)

Working on Custom Sign for Coffee Shop in my sign shop

As soon as that project was off the list, we began planning the next project: rebranding the signs at the 2-story University Commons building. This project was extremely interesting as it included a very large EMU mascot “selfie wall”, and track wall graphics that spanned the radius of the indoor track that covered six large walls. At the same time, we planned out changing out all the existing exterior directional signs and cleaning all existing post structures. The exteriors were the first two phases; then the main entrace area of the first floor of Commons. Then the rest of the first floor was Phase 4. The track wall graphics were Phase 5, and the rest of the second floor including a neat wood sign for the Common Grounds coffee shop was the final phase. I was busy on these projects from early February through October, 2022.

It was another challenging but successful project. What did it all cost, you might ask? All the design work for every project was done by the EMU marketing department so that part was covered by the college staff budget, otherwise the design portion for all the signage would cost well over $5,000. The cost of materials and labor to fabricate and install all the signs ranged from $5,000-$25,000 per phase, depending on the amount of work involved. The Track Wall Graphics Phase was the most expensive and some of the partial floor phases were the least expensive. Actually part of the exterior signage project is still in progress, awaiting permitting from the city. The infamous 2022 materials shortages affected the delivery of aluminum extrusion for part of the exterior signage. What usually took three weeks to procure took six months! Fortunately for my sign company, because projects were staggered over years, I was mostly able to get the materials for the pricing I quoted EMU.

Second Floor of University Commons, View of Newly Completed Signage

It looks like 2023 may be the year for the EMU Campus Center Sign Upgrades! I am much looking forward to more work on campus, and have developed a great working relationship with this group of customers! God is very good; yes, very good!

Mark Hackley owns and operates Augusta Sign Company in Augusta County, VA. Contact: 540-943-9818

How I Made the Sign for Hunters Glen Farm, Lexington, VA

Sign Upgrades at University Commons Building-Harrisonburg