Wow! All those tones of grey done with a pencil or pencils? that is so cool.
(although there may be a number of printing tricks that I wot not of)
It seems like you made it easy for the printer - the print could be flat areas of color.

I am also late to the party, but what the hey, it is so great to find something as amazing as these maps. Reading the comments it appears that all the lettering from 1905 to 1925 was done by one guy.
What a guy!

The blue chrome looks awesome in your photos. I would think that reds and yellows would be good, since they are both somewhat transparent. and yellow might make a dazzling gold - gold shock absorbers on a black bike, yum. Will artist oil colors mix into your 2part automotive? They can be a more pure...

Always fun, looking at the changes. I see that they changed the windows - the now image shows picture windows with small panes above, both changed since the earlier photo. OnCanal1.jpg But the real change that would surprise your grandfather is the way the neighborhood has evolved, as the business a...

Excellent! Perseverance Furthers!

1) Krylon Fusion basecoat (any sanding?)
2) Rinse; spray sensitize with Angel Gilding tin
3) Rinse; spray on 2 part Angel Gilding silver
4) Rinse and dry with hairdrier (the video)
5) Clearcoat with Alsa special clear

Have I got it correct?

Pat's comment made me think of something my friend who does production chipping mentioned once. He was talking about the trials & tribulations of setting up a "chipping room" in his (extensive) shop. He also does a lot of sandblasting, both mechanized and by hand, so he was (I think) s...

Roderick,
It was/is a dark blue, probably an acrylic. It matched the trim color of the original wall, before they repainted with the burnt orange. Maybe they repainted my letters while they were there, but I don't think so.

Way to go, Tony.
Next up: an X-ray of a hand holding a brush? Also an antique being...

Well, a lonely fan of Gatorfoam here. Maybe it has declined in quality, but I too used to use it for bigger cut-out letters on a moderate budget. These were cut, primed and painted with exterior latex and put up before 2000 (it could well have been 1990), so I don't have the files in digital form. T...

Whuf! Very believable. Does the bunch of medals come from something in the music?

"...dots made by hand." Did you do this with paint and brushes?? What size did you work at?

Yr obdn't servnt,
(X............ his mark)

Looks like a nice chip. How will it be hung - mirror clips, or a hidden backplate, or???

Hi, I don't have any pictures, I think I may have described it before but any visuals are in your head. and actually I don't know if Dan is still doing the production chipped glass, he may be just bevelling glass. His setup for that was cool too - big slow-turning felt wheels with water dripping on ...

Wow, that Rich Samsel site is really something. And how great to have a mirror shop and a cutting shop next to each other. My $.02 worth on glue chipping - I haven't done a lot, but I know two people who did (do) it commercially around here (Portland, Oregon - usually pretty damp area), and they had...

Okay, wise guy, try this game:

http://type.method.ac/?again

I just found this site, they may have some other good games deeper in...

cheers,
lee

Okay Sarah, I bow to your real-world experience. It's just that Lexan scratches so easily. But it is more flexible than acrylic - can you bend it and have the silver not fall off? (BTW, I googled "low surface energy plastic" and found a bunch of technical articles, mostly aimed at adhesive...

Hi VonSven, I'm sorry to say I don't know the specifications for a p'stripe racetrack, but somebody must. We had a lovely one at "LetterReign" in 1994but I don't know who made it. We kept it in our shop until we moved in '07 and it went to a local striper. I hear he wants to pass it on, so...

Very nice. I especially like the hands - such elaborate cuffs & sleeves. And of course the discussion of the Boston Roman and the New York Roman: "New York painters will not admit any style of letter to be superior or even equal to that in vogue in the greatest American city; they consider ...

" He told me the old timers used to rub the backing paint with jewelers rouge to prevent any unwanted reaction with the silvering process. " I wonder if rouge acts like kaolin powder to pull grease from the surface? It is a "very fine powder" - here is Wikipedia: "A very fin...

Very cool. I liked the newspaper posting hand painted paper banners in their windows - sort of a mix of cultures...

I think that kaolin is the best thing since sliced bread. I have a pounce bag of it in my kit, and we use it whenever we want to de-grease something. Here we have dried black paint outlines and dried quicksize centers, and we want to flow watersize in a nice sheet over everything - LeBlanc says to a...

Here is a form of "internal shade" that I saw in New Zealand. The first one (Dalziel's) was in a small, older village and I just hopped all over it. But later in Aukland (the capitol) I found it on a simple entry door (Tenants letters are about 1.25") - nicely done but loose, like a u...

(blush) Thanks James,

2915ne21stavenueLee

Eric - it looks as if you are airbrushing a blend with the tinted size? Did you do the tops with clear size , or the whole thing in clear and then a light fog of tint into the wet? We don't use the term "white spirits" in the US. I think it is a generic term, including what we here call &q...

So Vance, you want to apply slow size with an airbrush, right? It seems like you need a reducer to get the size liquid enough to spray well, but then it shouldn't affect the size's curing process. I'd try Darby's Reducer - it was designed as a spray reducer; or turpentine - which is a very powerful ...

Call these guys - they are in Seattle. I don't know about exterior bronze, what I've needed is individual name plaques, 1"x10", etched brass. The etching was good, the clearcoat a little streaky. Whenever I call I always get Greg, so it may be a small operation. www.aculineetch.com/ (PS: h...

It has always seemed to me that the critical part of silvering on plastic was the sensitizing, but we only tried it a couple of times. Judging by all the bar mirror advertisements in the world, somebody knows A) how to get acrylic to accept silver, and B) how to silver over paint without tarnishing ...

Hi John, I remember you two crazy Canadiens. That was Roy's shop in Tigard Self Storage, no? You guys could not believe that everybody in Portland used a mahlstick (aka "crutch"). Now THERE'S a topic for discussion: hand-over-hand / mahl stick /shocard bridge... Anyway, the story of Darby'...

For those who don't have Photoshop and are on an Apple (sounds like a good name for a children's book). Open your big photo in Preview, go to "Tools" in the menu bar, and down to "Adjust Size". This has a few preset sizes as well as "Custom". Then do a "Save As&quo...

...and I had to post these to The Hand Lettering Forum. You don't see a "typographic" casual very often, more's the pity. I'm guessing it is because it is hard to get a good flow of paint from a flat brush, and hard to keep a good chisel when using a quill (american name for a signpainting...

Eric, Many thanks for the history info and language lesson. So this date over the door of Int Aepjen is actually correct??? Here are a few other examples of script I saw, just so people don't think we're making this all up. And yes, I did see some in white vinyl, but that just shows that there is an...