Custom Wood Signs for Central Virginia

October 21, 2018 By Mark Hackley

CUSTOM WOOD SIGNS FOR CENTRAL VIRGINIA

LARGE SERVICE AREA

Based in Staunton, VA, Augusta Sign Company serves customers within a hundred miles of the shop with custom wood signs!

This large geographic service area includes the following areas:

Staunton, Waynesboro, Harrisonburg, Covington, Clifton Forge, Lexington, Lynchburg, Roanoke, Salem, Charlottesville, Richmond, Elkton, Grottoes, Verona, Weyers Cave, Stuarts Draft, Crimora, Amherst, Lovingston, Nellysford, Wintergreen, Afton, Crozet, Massanutten, Middlebrook, Goshen, Clifton Forge, Mount Sydney, Mount Crawford, Dayton, Broadway, Timberville, New Market, Stanley, Luray, Front Royal, Woodstock, Mount Jackson, Edinburg, Strasburg, Stephens City, Kernstown, Winchester, Fairfield, Natural Bridge, Fincastle, Troutville, Buchanan, Vinton, Rocky Mount, Ferrum, to mention a few!

TYPICAL CUSTOMER BASE

Customers we serve generally fall into these categories:

Churches, Medical Offices including Dental, Optical, and Veterinary, Professional Offices, Parks and Recreation, Public Works, Downtown Retailers, Specialty Shops, Hospitality, Private Farms and Residences, Industrial, Specialty Services, Schools, Libraries, and Museums.

TYPICAL SIGN TYPES

The typical types of custom wood signs we produce include:

Post and panel type signs where the wood sign is one or two-sided, mounted between two poles, or hung from a single post. Posts can be supplied by the customer, or we can fabricate or provide posts made of wood or aluminum. We can also provide standard iron scroll brackets for single-pole or wall mount signs.

Entry monument signage where the customer usually has a masonry contractor construct a brick or stone base designed for a custom wood sign. Augusta Sign Company is a licensed contractor and can subcontract sign base construction, or build certain types of stucco or custom wood sign monuments in-house.

Contact:

Mark Hackley

540-943-9818

OTHER SIGN SERVICES

In addition to custom wood signs, Augusta Sign Company can also help customers with Directional Signage and Wayfinding, 3-Dimensional Letters, Hand-Painted Specialty Signs, Gold Leaf, Vehicle and Window Graphics, Banners, Bronze Plaques, Industrial Safety and Parking Lot Signage.

Augusta Sign Company began as Tree Street Signs in 1990, changed its name in 2000 and began operating full-time as Augusta Sign Company in 2015. The shop is located in Augusta County, Virginia.

HOURS OF OPERATION

Mon-Fri 9:00AM-5:00PM, Closed Weekends and Holidays

5 Easy Ways to Market Church Events

July 4, 2018 By Mark Hackley

5 Easy Ways to Market Church Events

5 Easy Ways to Market Church Events:

1- Make a Banner: Banners are inexpensive ways to promote an event at your church. I make lots of banners for area churches of all denominations and many times I will donate my time to install them if they are reasonably close to my shop in Staunton, Virginia. I make simple banners in my shop using pre-cut and hemmed rolled one-sided banner stock material, a white 13 oz. material that has a glossy sheen. I design the banner layouts on my computer design software and use a vinyl-cutting machine to cut the graphics that I later apply to the blank, white banner. The banners come with pre-spaced grommets that allow for hanging on poles with hooks or attaching to walls and other flat surfaces with screws and fender washers. For more detailed banners or ones with more than one or two colors, I send them off for digital printing. In my small shop, banners may take longer to complete than some of the other shops in my area. If people are in a big hurry, I usually suggest they contact “All Phase Graphics” in Staunton, or “Viking Forge Design” in Waynesboro. Both these shops have in-house digital printers and may produce banners faster than what I can do. If you plan ahead, it takes about 1-2 weeks to get a banner order out during normal production levels at my shop.

2- Use a Marquee Sign: I often sell church signs that have a marquee sign component. A manual marquee is a sign that has tracks for changeable letters and churches can create and display custom messages advertising upcoming events to the public. The proper letter heights for your site can be calculated by considering viewing distance and speed limit. Most letters are in the 3″-8″ range for the church marquees I have made, and the letters are typically black on a white background. A church situated on a high-traffic highway may be more inclined to invest in an electronic marquee which has many advantages over the manual marquee signs that I can produce in my shop. I recommend churches interested in electronic signs contact “Holiday Signs” in Chester, VA.

3- Use Memorial Bricks to Fund a Comprehensive Marketing Campaign: I sold a sign to a Baptist church a few years ago by recommending they conduct a fundraising campaign first by selling memorial bricks. These are engraved bricks that can honor living or deceased church members and friends and are set in a foundation at the base of the church sign, or anywhere on the church campus where people can appreciate the memorialized members. The church raised enough money to purchase a new sign and they had a friend lay the brick at its base. Money raised this way could also be used for a comprehensive marketing campaign for a church event or events.

4- Make a Yard Sign: Churches can use the yard-type signs used by realtors and contractors to post information about upcoming events. These signs are generally smaller than banners, so they would be most effective for churches in residential areas versus those on main highways. I would suggest investing in a metal sign with a metal frame and utilize rider panels to gain more space for the message. If you’re on a tight budget, you can also use corrugated plastic material for the signs and these can be installed in the ground using inexpensive wire stakes. But remember this important rule: you get what you pay for!

5- Use a “Burma Shave” Series of Signs: If you have enough road space, you might consider designing a message that you can write over a series of yard signs. This type of set-up is always more effective in grabbing attention to your event!

Contact Mark Hackley, Augusta Sign Company, 540-943-9818

Applying Gold Leaf to Carved Signs

May 21, 2018 By Mark Hackley

Applying Gold Leaf to Carved Signs

ATTENTION-GETTER NEEDED

Applying gold leaf to carved signs is a great way to garner attention and give your signage a look of elegance and help add a look of sophistication to your home, office or entrance. I was recently hired to make a small carved wood sign for a horse farm that would replace the existing entrance sign. The original sign was in the same size range but was made of painted plywood and had a white background with black lettering. The old sign’s shape was rectangular but the customer wanted an oval shape that matched a wood sign system she had seen in Charlottesville, Virginia.

There are many commercial sign shops in the Shenandoah Valley area of Virginia where Augusta Sign Company is located, but there are few who can create durable signs in carved wood.

GO FOR THE GOLD

The customer wanted to know the cost of adding gold leaf letters instead of just plain, painted letters, and after I presented my proposal, she elected to go for the gold! Gold leaf is an ancient art form. “The Temple of Solomon was profusely gilt,” says Homer in his early writings. Gold leaf was widely used in old Roman art, architecture, furniture, and carved lettering. Gold leaf is actual gold that is beaten down to a fine sheet and applied to surfaces with “size”, a special type of “glue” that the thin metal sheets stick to. To make the sign for the horse farm, I first ordered the cedar panel and had the letters and borders CNC-routed from my customer-approved design. Once the letters and borders were carved, I sanded them with fine-grit sandpaper to smooth out any course grain in the lettering. Once sanded, I cleaned and primed the entire two-sided sign with a quality oil-based primer that seals the wood and provides an adequate base for the finish coat, which in this case was a brush-painted Hunter Green sign enamel. It helps to tint your primer to the shade of your finish coat, so I added some black tint to make a gray primer coat. I use the 2-2-2 method in my finishing of wood signs: 2 coats primer, 2 coats background finish, and 2 coats for the graphics, which for this project meant two passes of gilding to catch any missed areas and pinholes.

WAXING GLOW

Once the gold was applied and cured for several days, I burnished it with a cotton ball and completely waxed the entire sign using Nu-Finish synthetic auto wax, available in most auto parts stores. The post was constructed from a 6″ X 6″ X 13′ long Southern Yellow Pine column with a beefed-up area at the bottom of the post, suggested by my customer’s architect. The sign post was colored black to match the black iron scroll bracket, which was a stock item from my supplier. I used stainless steel eye-bolts and quick links to attach the sign to the bracket. The sign was planted in a 3 foot deep hole and surrounded with fast set concrete.

I appreciate opportunities to make signs with gold leaf, and have done my share of them over the years. I learned this specialized art during my career as a sign painter at Andrews Air Force Base in the early 1980’s, and received extra training in the early 1990’s from a sign carving workshop led by expert sign carver, Jay Cooke of Stowe, Vermont. Applying gold leaf to carved signs is a specialty thing that I especially enjoy. It adds substantial cost to your project, but it provides a level of attention not doable by other sign media. If you’re interested in purchasing signs with or without gold leaf for your farm, store, or office, give me a call anytime and I’d be happy to take a look at what you have in mind.

Mark Hackley is owner of Augusta Sign Company in Staunton, Virginia. 540-943-9818

Augusta Sign Company Now True to its Name

September 28, 2017 By Mark Hackley

Augusta Sign Company Now True to its Name

STAUNTON, VIRGINIA Mark Hackley, owner of Augusta Sign Company formerly of Waynesboro, Virginia has moved his sign shop to Augusta County, Virginia, near Staunton. So Augusta Sign Company is now true to its name!

PART-TIME BEGINNINGS

Augusta Sign Company began in Laurel, Maryland in the early 1980’s. Mark Hackley learned to paint signs as an apprentice signpainter at the National Naval Medical Center (now called Walter Reed National Military Medical Center) in Bethesda in 1980 and became a journeyman signpainter at Andrews Air Force Base (now called Joint Base Andrews) in Prince Georges County, Maryland. Mark first began contracting signage with his colleague Allen Gray around 1983. He then formed Kullman Signs with a friend, also on a part-time basis, around 1985. By 1987 Mark had formed Western Signs and Graphics and took out his first newspaper ad in the Laurel Leader. By 1988, Mark was married and he moved his business, still called Western Signs and Graphics, to Waynesboro, Virginia. He worked from home on a part time basis while working for Keeney and Company Architects of Charlottesville for about a year but before long, Mark began renting space above the former Doll Hospital on Wayne Avenue in Waynesboro later in 1988.

FROM ARCHITECTURE TO ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN

In April, 1990, Mark resigned as a draftsman and began a full-time sign company! He changed the name to Tree Street Signs and Graphics and moved his business to Charlotte Avenue, where he remained for one full year. The business began to grow and Mark soon expanded to a larger facility in Crimora, Virginia, where he rented industrial space from Gary and Linda Scrogham of Scrogham Enterprises.

It was at this point when Mark upgraded his business from a sole proprietorship to a corporation. This is the same corporation operating today as Augusta Sign Company. Although the business was sold to Tedsan, Inc. in 2000, Mark kept his contracting license and corporation going on a part-time basis as he worked for various organizations in sales and marketing. In July, 2015, Mark re-started his business from his home on Magnolia Avenue in Waynesboro. Once again he grew the business back as though it had never taken a break! He added a detached shop building later that year and worked from that location until September 1 of this year, when he moved to a larger shop between Middlebrook and Staunton on Middlebrook Road.

BROAD SERVICE AREA

Augusta Signs serves customers throughout Virginia. Earlier this month Mark installed signage for a law firm in Richmond, Virginia and next month he will be working on branding condominiums in Alexandria, Virginia. Even though he will take on regional projects, most of his jobs are derived from customers in Augusta County.

The company specializes in custom wood signage, both new and refurbished. Anyone interested in having Mark come out for a survey for a new or existing sign, may contact him at mark@augustasigncompany.com.

Five Advantages of Carved Wood Signs

March 1, 2017 By Mark Hackley

Five Advantages of Carved Wood Signs

Five advantages of carved wood signs over say choosing other various forms of signs are not really hard to see, if you look closely.

First, the main advantage is interest. The carved letters make the letters interesting. Since light reflects at an angle, the V-Carved letters serve to boost reflectivity. Add gold leaf and, “Wow!”

“The lettering on our new church directional sign looks great,” said Kenneth Lee of Rodes United Methodist Church in Nelson County, Virginia. I just completed a carved wood sign for Mr. Lee after his former sign was destroyed during routine mowing. (See accompanying photos of this nice little sign.)

Here are four more advantages of carved wood signs:

Carved signs last a long time: Since the wood is usually cedar, redwood, or mahogany, these species are insect and rot resistant. With 10-year maintenance periods, the signs will long outlive most sign buyers!

Carved signs value is much greater than signs made with less-precious materials and less-tedious labor. These signs are truly the Cadillacs of signs, but if you’re okay with a Kia then that’s your prerogative.

Carved signs can be designed to blend in with the environment, yet stand out as graphics.

Carved signs look awesome when spot-lit!

I’m sure there are even many more reasons why your church, your professional office, your medical practice, your law firm, your downtown retail store, your florist, your retirement center, your hospital, your school, your veterinary clinic, (see where I’m going here?) would choose a carved wood sign over other options. Let us know if you’d like to see your name in WOOD!

WOODN’T YOU? I SURE WOOD! (But I’m partial.)

Mark Hackley is owner of Augusta Sign Company, Waynesboro, VA 22980