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Hi all... after spending the last 16 or so years in front of a computer I'm going back to how I started my career in graphics, I've been practicing my lettering and pinstriping and have even done a few small jobs with paint rather than vinyl. What I'd like to know is what kinds of things do you keep around in your boxes... what brushes, brands and sizes, whether you trim your brushes and how/why.... even what kind of box you keep all your stuff in. I'm at a point that I want to keep expanding my skills and experience and was hoping to get enough response here to make a better educated decision about materials to spend my money on. And I am hoping to get to Jill's Jam in January... it's only about 2 hours from me.
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I personally just never have the right brush..but I still keep them all in my kit. I also have masking tape (blue & regular), exacto & tweezers, stabilos, paint opener, popcicle sticks, gold & felt squeegees, the sample bottles of rapid products, cups, pounce wheel & pad, leatherman, minature clamps, extra magazine for palleting, pro-pallet, paper towels, tape measure, small t-square. Ok, so maybe I overpack. This is the heavy old machinist box that sits on my counter in the shop that I'm into all day. I do have a smaller box that I pack with the tools needed for the specific job I'm going on.
Then there is my gold leaf box.
-------------------- Chris Welker Wildfire Signs Indiana, Pa Posts: 4254 | From: Indiana, PA | Registered: Mar 2001
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Yep Bill,I try to carry EVERYTHING I would need to paint signs with all at one time! "allways be prepaired" What you don't see is....colapsible mahl stick,fineline & masking tape,pushpins, razor blades,pounce wheels & powder,exacto knife,charcoal sticks,gold leaf,transfer paper ALL in the other top drawers
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if you can..."just free-hand" letter then you dont need much as far as brushes go. if your workin on windows, vehicles, smooth surfaces youll need #4, 8, 10-12, 18-20 quill brown or gray, this choice you will have to make after you find which you like better. couple truck flats, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and a 1" for fill work. if you gona work on walls of brick, plaster stucco, you need a range of fitches from 1/2" to 1 1/2". paint, if you got the basic primary colors, you can make the rest. turps, an empty can to clean brushes, chalk line so you can strike a line STRAIGHT...couple yard sticks, alum i prefer, and one of these has a 1/4" hole drilled thur it at every inch mark from 18-35, and one hole at the one inch. this is how you make circles and arches when your "snappin". i use these plastic "picnic plates" to paint outa. they have 3 divisions, one i put in paint, a little turps/mineral spirits in the other and the 3rd one i "pallet" the brush. these plates last forever, cause paint dont stick to em. once the paint is dry, you can take a screwdriver, get under the paint and it will peel off and your plate is clean. china markers, red, white, yellow blue or black. pounce powder, i use dry tempra powder, some use carpenters chalk line powder. for dark background i use J & J baby powder. as for brush storage i keep the quills and flats in 10 w NON-DETERGENT motor oil, the fitches are stored dry. new brushes....OIL EM BEFORE YOU USE THEM TO PAINT WITH.... this puts the oil in the heel(up where the wire holds the hairs together)and wont let paint in there to dry and make your brush useless. with a couple years of practice, a good visual imaging sence, so you can see what your gona do before its done, a few quick drawings and your set to go.....PAINT!!!!!! P.S. keep a gallon or so of mineral spirits and a big bag-o-rags...SO WHEN YOU SCREW IT UP you can start over.........hahahahahaha
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
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HEY....you forget i got THE SIGN SHOP ON WHEELS????? and i can cut vinyl......on the spot!!! heheheheheheheeh
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
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I must say that most all new brushes come with sizing in them and that these brushes must be washed using warm water under the tap before oiling them. This process is according to Mack Brushes.
I carry most all of what everyone else has said, but how I the brushes may be different to others. I sandwich them between 2 pieces of green medium density foam which is also oil filled.
There are so many things that I do and use that are way different then most users, and stating them here is too time consuming.
-------------------- HotLines Joey Madden - pinstriping since 1952 'Perfection, its what I look for and what I live for'
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Hey John, (the good guys are named John...old joke)... nice to see your direction.
I did the same thing 3 years ago...been interesting...and very satisfying....and... I just got a new kit box, from The Aluminum Case Co....they sell them to Midwest Sign Supply.
I'll post again with some addresses, would love to correspond....
John Lennig / SignRider
-------------------- John Lennig / Big Top Sign Arts 5668 Ewart Street, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada bigtopya@hotmail.com 604.451.0006 Posts: 2184 | From: Burnaby, British Columbia,Canada | Registered: Nov 2001
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John, the kit is 18"x10"hix8"wide. Fold open with 4 trays for brushes, etc. more storage in bottom. I don't keep any paints or liquids in there, except brush oil. After seeing Cal Trauters kit, I just had to get one!Trays lined with felt to soak up oil.**
Seeing Pat Kings kit on the Rte. 66 meet page, that's a beautiful kit! Pat, did you make it, or??
Some oddments that i have in the kit, other than the usual.... 12"&18" alum. rules, sectional compass for big circles,a 10" level, hold it or tape it to a straightedge to be on the level, sandpaper,perf. wheel.
John Lennig / SignRider
** re: kit... it's #2319 vinyl clad aluminum tool case 140.00 US Their ph. #...773.247.4611 ask for George they're in Chicago
-------------------- John Lennig / Big Top Sign Arts 5668 Ewart Street, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada bigtopya@hotmail.com 604.451.0006 Posts: 2184 | From: Burnaby, British Columbia,Canada | Registered: Nov 2001
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a strip of magnetic stuck to your rules and yard sticks.... wicked handy! Those info cards from sign magazines make great pallets! I use to keep a complete kit just for road use and that limited my forgeting to load stuff... been known to leave without the whole damn kit a few times so I just made it a permanent fixture in the truck. Also had specialty kits.... i.e. the cut and roll kit, gold kit, fleet decals kit,lunch kit
-------------------- "No excuses!.... No regrets!..."
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Hey OP and Si.... here's my signshop... it's completely mobile as well... cutter, computer, light table and even a compressor for the airbrush
I really like the looks of that box too! OP... what's the difference between the brown and the grey quills? The thing I'm getting frustrated the most with is a good brush to write script with. I've heard of people cutting down a #4... just don't get it... the brushes I have (don't even know what they are... but I know they're cheap!) don't seem to want to cooperate.
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Liquor, joints, beer, playing cards, loaded dice, brass knuckles, slim jim, couple of hand guns, a leather whip with matching spiked heel boots, oh,,, I'm sorry you meant sign kit, I thought you said SIN kit.
-------------------- Signs by Alicia Jennings (Mudflap Girl) Tacoma, WA Since 1987 Have Lipstick, will travel. Posts: 3819 | From: Tacoma, WA. U.S.A. | Registered: Dec 1999
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brown quills are a little longer and softer....are more plyable(meaning you can move them tighter and they react to your movement with more control, greys are stiffer and will leave brush strokes.....and dont work well in tight turns.
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
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Hmmmmm, lemme see... Top shelf, every enamel brush I've ever owned, numerous timber and masonry drill bits, a stencil knife, several exactos and snap-off blade knives, snap caps, some rogue metal screws that have made their way there from the adjoining partition and a well grooved 2" whet stone all well bedded in a thick layer of vaseline. Plus 2 fitches. Under that is a pounce bag made from a sock and a hair band, two bags of builders chalk (not oxide) with which to fill the pounce bag, a grey plastic case held closed with a thick red rubber band containing the rest of the stencil knives, a tin of gold size (probably gone hard), more drill bits, a tape measure, a "tomstuck" (sp Henry?) pronounced Tomshtook" or fold out 1 metre ruler given to me by a Swedish mate, numerous bits of paper from jobs long since completed, a piece of velvet stuffed with cotton wool that never was any good at burnishing gold, an infinite number of totally buggered squeegees, a bar of Solvol abrasive soap, a considerable coating of vaseline compliments of the tube that burst about 2 years into my apprenticeship, a plastic pate container full of some white powder that I "borrowed" that is fantastic for cleaning windows but I have no idea what to replace it with, a tube of Keeps Primrose Yellow that is so old and full of the good stuff that it will cover anything in one coat and weighs more than the combined weight of everything else in the box and when mixed with linseed oil smells better that sex, eons of crud on the bottom that could almost be carbon dated to tell of various periods of its evolution. I wouldn't clean it for quids. Oh thats right, you wanted sone ideas of what to buy for a new kit... One word for enamel, Sable. Keep the ferrule clean.
David
-------------------- David Fisher D.A. & P.M. Fisher Services Brisbane Australia da_pmf@yahoo.com Trying out a new tag: "Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth Peter Ustinov Posts: 1450 | From: Brisbane Queensland Australia | Registered: Nov 1998
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Hi John... Well, my kits got swiped last year BUT Thanks to Kissy, I have a vinyl kit. Thanks to Karen Souza, I have a brush box. And thanks to Catherine Foster, I have a magenta and barbed-wire hand-painted sign kit. Everybody signed it at FKAB. It is great. I have: Brown quills, odd & even #s. A swirly-Q and an Alan Johnson signature brush from my pal CJ. 2 soft German metal ferrule brushes from John Jordan. Brushes from other letterheads. 2 Xcaliber stripers...shorter handles fit my hands well. A collapsible mahl stick. A Han-See pounce pad and 2 homemade jobbies, one with white chalk & one with black graphite. Stabilo pencils. X-Acto & snap-off razor knives. Straight-edged razor. Small cork-backed metal rulers. Blue and tan fine-line tape. Little plastic cups. Popsicle sticks. A quarter to open cans of 1-shot. A screwdriver. Business cards. Scissors. Baby Oil. Little clamps. Rubber gloves. Sharpie markers. Tylenol. That's about it! But I really want to get some charcoal sticks too. Maybe if I am a good girl Santa will bring me some! Love- JILL Hope to see that truck in my driveway next month!
-------------------- That is like a Mr. Potato Head with all the pieces in the wrong place. -Russ McMullin Posts: 8834 | From: Butler, PA, USA | Registered: Jan 2001
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I remember this same question from a few months back. Cut and paste is nice posted August 06, 2003 11:16 PM I posted some pics of my new kit a few months back but I've got no way of posting anything now. It's a deep top two drawer metal box from Sears. Inside are 36 4oz bottle of One Shot 5 of PPG Concept 8 of HOK urethane , 1 each of OS reducer, OS cat, HOK cat, PPG cat PPG reducer, OS reducer a bottle of fish eye eliminator ( no I don't use it all the time, only when necessary, the bottle is twenty something years old and still two thirds full ) 25 quills ranging from 0-26, five flats, one soft hair fitch, a pair of pliers, a razor blade scraper, a lil chizler, chalk, charcoal, stabillos and staedtlers, a grease pencil, x-acto knife and blades, a pounce wheel, A Koh I Noor sharpener, 47 sword stripers, 6 scroll brushes, 2 signiture brushes.
My old kit had twice as much stuff in it and weighed about seventy pounds. I also have a tote tray with about thirty rolls of Finessee tape, 1/4 inch fine line, masking tape. Another box holds my airbrush stuff, various wrenches, pounce bags, Static Guard, a butane torch and a squeege ( not for vinyl, but a big one like you would clean windows with, gets water off a vehicle QUICK ) I also have a bucket full of various sponges, pads and other odds and ends to ad texture with. A gallon of laquer thinner, wax and grease remover, a quart of acetone, a quart of alcohol and a gallon of mineral spirits. I also carry a waste basket a 6' step ladder and a Killer Kart. If I can't do the job with what's in my truck, I pass on it.
IF I have to install vinyl, I'll take whatever is necessary with me. The other things stay in the truck at all times
-------------------- George Perkins Millington,TN. goatwell@bigriver.net
"I started out with nothing and still have most of it left"
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