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Hi Heads, The "MONDAY" Tips and Tricks is now starting to load slow. Please continue on posting under this post.
Thank you all for the great Tips and Tricks! Please keep them coming! I appreciate the time and trouble you all have gone to to contribute. I have enjoyed all the posts and found out how much I have forgotton over the years. I used to use Steve Shortreed's suggestion on using the yard stick...but over the years fell out of practice using the technique. I was practicing today to see if I could still pull a straight line. I could go on....but just let me say thanks to all of you!
=================================== Here is an organizational tip for stacking new material and cut pieces
The drawing below represents different material, different colors, different thicknesses, all stacked up against a wall. The WAY they are stacked allows the signmaker to see every piece and determine its size.
The tip here is to "RIGHT JUSTIFY" all the edges, placing the bigger pieces in back, and working forward with smaller pieces.
This takes up very little shop space. A 4' x 8' area is all you need. Allow about 12 inches for stacking depth.
Its easy to maintain when new pieces are added to the stack. Find the proper place and shove it in!
It looks neat. It takes little effort to maintain, and best of all, its a FREE STORAGE SYSTEM because you don't need to build racks.
------------------ Go Get 'Em..... :) AKA Raptorman I know one thing....you have to pay your Web Site bill or they delete the site! oops drapersigns.com is gone :) Draper The Signmaker Bloomington, Illinois www.drapersigns.com
Posts: 2883 | From: Bloomington Illinois USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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Thanks for all the new Tips and "refreshers", here's a couple that came to mind. When drawing a script style letter don't use any top & bottom guidelines, kind of let the letters bounce and keep a nice "uneven" flow going. This will make it more interesting and natural. Boat lettering, stay away from scrict letter styles if possible, there is never a straight line to use to line the lettering up with and if it's in the water Goudy bold with round serifs going to be a whole lot easier to letter than Times roman or Avant Guarde.Most people have boats to have fun so make the lettering playful, unless your lettering the "Queen Mary" then of course it has to be Times! Matt
------------------ Matthew Broadus Jacksonville, Fl.
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Thanks to everybody for their tips so far. Here's a few more.
Painting For painting double sided panels especially but for all painting of boards and panels. Cut 2 lengths of 4"x2" timber at 30" each. Attach a triangular shaped moulding of the same length to the middle of the 4" face on each. Drill a hole in the end of each so they can be hung on the wall in their own place. They can be placed across 2 sawstools or on a benchtop. There is such a small amount of contact with the board that touch up is quick and easy.
For getting the best dust free finish, especially with dark colours. 3 panel pins or nails (depending on the weight and size of panel) driven in to your bench top and the heads snipped off makes a perfect support for your freshly painted panel to be supported upside down while drying. No dust. The tiny marks that are made by the sharp end of the nails are virtually invisible.
For painting the edges of pre finished MDO etc. Cut a heap of foam rubber pieces 3" long by 1" x 1". Keep them clean in a screw top jar. Fold one lengthwise and grip with a clamp, the type that grips by itself ..you release by squeezing, so that the folded part extends beyond the clamp jaw about a half inch. Use your paint tin lid as a palette and using your new foam brush extract a little paint onto the palette. Paint the edge of your board, put the lid back on the can, dump your foam in the rubbish. If need be wipe any excess colour off the face of the board ...there won't be much.
Add a little dish washing detergent to acrylic and latex paints to overcome mild cissing.
If you don't like wearing disposable gloves and you get paint (oil based) on your hands use linseed oil to clean it off rather than turps or thinners. Linseed oil is a natural product and as the years go by your hands will thank you for it.
Length of string Perhaps in this age of computers it's not quite so neccessary but I still find a length of string in my kit to be very useful. Just some of the uses it can be put to are; making an arc. A circle. An ellipse or oval. With a weight attached it's a plumbob for finding the perpindicular on a wall and a right angle to that is your level for your lettering. It's a snap line in chalk or charcoal. When you've forgotten your tape it can even be used as a measuring device.
Panel & board sizes If the panel size is not already specified or up to you use the Golden Rectangle principles. That is 1 to .618. Therefore if your board is 1.5 metres long it will be 927mm wide. Sheet sizes are normally 2400 x 1200 wide. They are made this size not for us but for the building industry and the accepted 2.4 ceiling stud height. This 2 to 1 size is not particularly easy to work with or pleasing to the eye. These ( Golden Rectangle) ratios are all around us - more or less - in the form of paper sizes, envelopes, playing cards, cigarette packets, matchboxes, credit cards, business cards etc. etc. Try them. You'll be in good company. Leonardo Da Vinci and Michael Angelo used them extensively for their painting frame sizes.
Scaling The most valuable tip I can share with you is what I do with my calculator. For some of you Americans it will mean teaching yourself to use millimetres instead of inches but even if you use them only for this part of your work I think you'll find it worthwhile. The basis of this tip is an expression that you may remember from school called a "Common Denominator". Let's say you're doing a wall and your design is going to be 9.5 metres in length. You have either a copy of your customers logo or your computer generated sketch on an A4 piece of paper in your hand. Say the lettering on the paper is 235mm long. Divide 9500 by 235. The result is 40.4255. Multiply this by 1. Doing this sets the constant in your calculator. That's it. Your common denominator in this example is 40.4255. It's very accurate and in most cases more than it needs to be. Everything to the right of the decimal point is a percentage of one millimetre and can probably be ignored. Now measure the height of the letter, the width of the stroke, the distance between a pair of letters, the depth of a descender. The answers are what you jot down on your sketch ready to be marked out on the wall. Naturally you take your calculator and your sketch up on the trestles with you. I always write the Common Denominator on the sketch. If the power goes off as it does with solar powered calculators I just have to re-enter the Common Denominator and multiply by 1. One important point is that you don't use the multiplication key again after multiplying by 1. Just take the measurement from your copy, enter it in the calculator and press the equals key. You can check that you havn't corrupted your CD at any time by entering 1 then equals. It should be the same as the one you jotted down on your sketch. This is the fastest, easiest and most accurate way I've found for transferring all the information needed from the design that I've finished in the computer to the waiting board. I simply print a sketch using a wireframe mode to save ink. It doesn't matter what size it comes out at. Just choose fit to page if you like. You will have shown the board size on your drawing so simply divide the length of the waiting sign board by the length on your sketch. Multiply that by one and away you go. Top and bottom lines, panel locations, margins, anything that you need.
Weeding After applying the application tape I always turn the weeded lettering over and remove the liner from the lettering rather than the other way around. It releases much more easily, particularly with small and serifed lettering and leaves the application tape flat.
Static electricity A damp chamois (not synthetic) wiped over corflute or PVC panels will remove static electricity.
I hope some of these are useful to you.
------------------ Bryant Thompson Assignment Signwriters Auckland New Zealand email signman@ihug.co.nz
Posts: 12 | From: Auckland New Zealand | Registered: Mar 1999
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Here's a couple of tips to make clean-up a little easier when removing painted lettering from a window. Lern't them by luck (accident).. Before you start scraping, attach 2" masking tape below the legnth of the lettering - but only attach the bottom 3/4" of the tape. Fold the remaining 1 1/4" back towards you to make a sticky 'ledge'. When you scrape the paint, most of it will fall and stick to the tape. You may have to change the tape a few times on larger windows but it beats bringing the shop vac to the site. Another thing I've tried - before scaping, spray the window with water. The water keeps the paint 'stuck' to the window and blade. Keep a plastic bag handy and start scaping and shovelin' that stuff into the bag.
Disclaimer: Author takes no resposiblity for anything besides himself, his family, his shop, his word and his boat. This includes but is not limited to: Outrageously stupid customers, cheap customers, bad paint jobs on vehicles, crooked roof lines, unscroupulous people, taxes, code enforcement, lame sign ordinances, or sandblast stencil ripping up the grain on wood signs. (yuk yuk) This could make a whole new thread!
Love the tips - keep 'em coming! Peace
------------------ Capt. Sign "Champion of the Signage Impaired"
Posts: 2279 | From: Melbourne, FL, USA | Registered: Jan 1999
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To keep your sign enamel from skinning use a couple of droplets of Paint-Sav made by the same people who make Sapphire brush Oil. It does not alter the paint in any way and your paint will never skin. If you make a mistake when signing on vehicles, to wipe off the mistake use a paper towel, wipe it across your forehead for body oil and wipe your mistake away, body oil works best and no reason for messy solvents. Cleaning Your brushes and air brushes is a snap when using an ultrasonic cleaner, a few minutes unattended is all you need.
------------------ Hassle Fiasco #1897. 44 years in the classic art of Pinstriping. A born traveller now in Grants Pass,Oregon. Coming to your town soon...... pinstriping.cjb.netkillerkart.cjb.net
Posts: 7 | From: Main Street, USA | Registered: Mar 2001
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When you change your old dirty bong water, keep it for adding to white acrylic paint. It adds just that little bit of extra opacity. Its also a half decent application fluid if your stuck without the real thing.
When you clean the paint out a roller under a running tap, put a scanner in the spray path. Get a really good "rooster tail" going and scan and save the effect for when you want a nice water drop look to your graphics. It even work well if you vectorize it for cutting lots of little dots instead of drawing them all with a mouse.
Keep little square of cardboard handy for cleaning out the rims of paint tins, not to mentions how handy they are for rolling filters.
Keep little scraps of vinyl for those 101 household uses. Great for colour coding all the foods in your pantry. We use red for thursdays, green for fridays and blue for mondays of course. You'll never get sick of the same old boring cheese sandwiches day after day with this tip!!!
Brush oil has uses in the bedroom you've never even imagined! Well, maybe some of you have.
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For all those Signlab users. When a scanned image comes in with two many nodes, here is a way to eliminte them easily. With your node edit tool select all the nodes and then go shift-u. This will delete every second node. You may have to refresh to see the change. This can be done a few times and still maintain the object shape. Again select all, shift-i to add a node between all existing nodes, shift-o to convert to a circle, shift-c to change from one node type to the next, shift-v to aligne selected nodes to a vertical line, shift-h to aligne to a horizontal. Let the edit begin.
------------------ Harry Pinkse Sign Matters Mount Forest,Ont. "Because YOUR Sign Matters"
Posts: 57 | From: Mount Forest, Ont. | Registered: Feb 1999
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I have found the way that best helps me to pull long lines on vehicles is with long narrow strips of magnetic rubber. The rubber can be manipulated into the positions you want the lines to run along at about ¼ inch away from where you want the actual line. You can then lightly use the edge of the rubber as a guide for your finger (remembering to watch where you are going and not look back where you have been.)
------------------ Drane Signs Nambour, Qld.
Posts: 965 | From: Nambour, Qld. Australia | Registered: Nov 1998
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Here's a couple of Corel Draw 8 tips for anyone who may not know them. Those boxes on your property bar where you type in X,Y co-ordinates and horizontal & vertical heights can be more useful than they already are. If you have a box that's 66.625 inches wide and you wanted to add .329 inches to it, you can just click inside on the right of the width box where it says 66.625" and type +0.329 The computer will do the math for you. I can usually do the math in my head, but this tip comes in really handy with the x/y co-ordinates where you can just add +2 at the end of it's co-ordinates to move an object over exactly 2". etc.
Another tip involving these boxes is the ability to enter a measurement in the way that we say these measurements. I always work in inches for units, but I can enter feet in these boxes as well. So if I wanted a box that was 10'-5 1/2", I would highlight the entire width box (including the apostrophe that sometimes doesn't want to highlight), and type exactly 10'5.5 The computer will then switch it to 125.5 for me, while still let me work in inches for my units. (I find it more precise and easier than working in feet). I hope I explained that ok. Basically, it lets me think in feet and draw in inches without converting it myself.
------------------ Bob Darnell London, Ontario, Canada _______________________ bob@skynet.ca Online Portfolio available at: www.skynet.ca/~bob
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If you find yourself using a jigsaw often, then you should look into a "RotoZip" spiral saw. It might well be the neatest tool (toy) since sliced bread! Cuts just about anything. The one with the handle and a cord will run you about $80 U.S. plus another $20 for a circle cutting jig. Best $100 I ever spent (again )
------------------ Pete Kouchis Say it with SIGNS, Inc. Phone: (708)460-3001 Fax: (708)460-3006 Orland Park, IL, USA
Posts: 150 | From: Orland Park, IL, USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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If its windy outdoors, then tape your graphics with 3 layers of application tape. The Graphics will be much easier to handel.
When registering multi-colored vinyl graphics we use R-Tape Clear. (no need to make registration marks, lines or anything. The tape is extremely clear, and stiff enough to make a perfect registration.
When using paper application tape, after the graphic is applied to the vehicle or sign, soak it with water before removing. This will cause it to break down and come off easliy
Cleaning a vehicle with alcohol ( or most sign surfaces ) is a wise idea for a great bond of vinyl graphics.
Its also wise to use a heat gun to go back over all edges of vinyl lettering to make sure they are sealed down. Edges of vinyl letters will pulled away from the surface when removing the application tape, especially if the surface is cold, causing pre-mature failure.
Never use a blow torch to remove vinyl graphics on a truck. Gas fumes could be present and cause an explosion....you do not need this trouble! Save the Blow torch for a sign out in the field where there is no power for a heat gun.
Cindy says "Say Bye bye!"
So....I guess I can't play anymore today!
Bye Bye
------------------ Go Get 'Em..... :) AKA Raptorman on #Letterheads mIRC Chat Draper The Signmaker Bloomington Illinois USA
Posts: 2883 | From: Bloomington Illinois USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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For those short run (Touch football, indoor cricket etc.) shirt printing jobs, you can use a vinyl stencil. I use cast vinyl and cut the layout in mirror, apply to screen and after printing, the stencil hoses off easily.
------------------ Drane Signs Nambour, Qld.
Posts: 965 | From: Nambour, Qld. Australia | Registered: Nov 1998
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Another tip that works great in Corel 8. When setting the size of an object or the siz of the drawing area, it is not necessary to input decimal numbers. If you enter the siz as a fraction, Corel will convert it to decimal. (i.e. enter 3 1/8 as 3 space 1/8 and Corle will register the new size as 3.125 This may work in Corel 7 too (I haven't tried it in 7).
------------------ Jerry Smith Graphics Now Mt.Clemens, Michigan
Posts: 77 | From: Harrison Twp, MI USA | Registered: Mar 1999
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Get'n up top to celebrate the end of tips week to thank everybody for all the new brain candy. tip: get/stay more involved with the bullboard --- "everyday should be Christmas / every week should be tip week"
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When Airbrushing vinyl, either with an Airbrush or a can of krylon, cut your lettering first then degrease either with a good ammonia glass cleaner or degreaser. "Don't" weed the vinyl till after you airbrush, you'll find that gives a nice clean job, It's a pain when you have all kinds of overspray on your backing paper.
------------------ "Keep Positive"
Posts: 6277 | From: St. John's NF Canada | Registered: Mar 1999
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One last tip for those who count Sunday as the 7th day of the week -- One of my favorite "tools" in the shop is my curve ruler. This is a flexible ruler used to measure non-conforming shapes. If your plotter misses cutting the outside curve of a letter, an S for example,just conform the ruler to the missing curve and use your exacto blade to swiftly and smoothly hand cut the vinyl.
------------------ Kelli Cajigas aka Janda Dolphin deSigns Key West
I could go on....but just let me say thanks to all of you!
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