Wood and Glass Job

[Raymond Chapman]

This is a wood and glass job we recently installed in a large hospital just a few blocks from our studio.

It's 27" x 36" overall. Mahogany (1.5") frame with quarter inch clear glass. The copy is hand carved and gilded, plus the shell shapes were hand carved from HDU and gilded - they hide the mounting screws.

Even though it is hard to see, the glass was stage etched with some of Jackson's clip art and the field is glue chipped. Lettering is 23k bright with 16k matt centers.

The sunset photo is attached to a piece of Dibond which is offset from the glass 3/16".

There are a lot of imperfections in this piece and while it does not rate up there with the masterpieces that many of you do, it was still a lot of fun to do. It has been about 20 years since I have done a glue-chipped, glass job like this. Hopefully, it won't be that long before the next one.

I'd be interested in what others here might have charged for this piece. Care to share?

[John Grenier]

Whats behind the chipped field? Price, mmmmmm?
Need to be outdoors?

Looks like $1500 off the top of my hooded parka.

I'll figure it out and see how close that is.

Design 4hr and 1 visit to client and site.

27x36 mahogany frame:
Go see my boat buddies to get some mahogany, stand around and talk about boats and names to letter in the near future and have coffee.
$50 for wood and $6 for donuts for the boat buddies. 1.25 hrs

Order oval glass from the guy in the Soo, 10 minutes and long distance phone call and then talk for 20 more minutes about the perch in Manoskin Bay as compared the perch over here. Call Itchy and have him pick it up on his way home from visiting his mom in the hospital, 15 minutes about his mom and how she always cooks perch. Give Itchy a pack of last nights fresh perch for his trouble.
$35 for glass and $3 for calls. .75hr

Get glass oval and make pattern for frame.
Laminate mahogany for frame.
Cut frame and finish edges and rabbit back for glass.
$5 glue and biscuits. 2hr

Pattern for carved lettering
$2 for stuff. .5hr

Cut mask on plotter
$10 vinyl. 1hr

Sandblast glass.
$5 .5hr

Clean glass and prepare and apply glue
$10 1hr

Go ice fishing rest of the day. $2 for bait.
$3 gas for snowmobile.

Transfer pattern and carve lettering on frame.
$5 for stuff 4hr

Stain mahogany
$5 .25hr

Seal mahogany
$5 .25ht

Varnish 3 times
$20 2hrs

Gild letters
1book and size $50 2hr

Last varnish
.25hr

Gild glass and paint and back up, blah blah blah
$50 gold 5hr.

make illustration print
$5 1.25 hr

assemble and install.
2hr

$464
27.75hr x 65.00 = $1803.75

$2267.75

So what do you think, can they afford to spend that much?

Goose is here, gotta go they say the perch are bitting in Mackinac Bay....

...wheres my bibs and the other liner for my Sorels, geezopetes woman anyway. Beautiful eyes glance towards the back door.

Oh, by the door, where I left them in a pile.

John

[Raymond Chapman]

John, now that's a detailed outline of the work if I ever saw one. Thanks for sharing. And no, it's not outdoors. Can they afford that? They are a large hospital, although this gift shop is operated by an auxiliary of the hospital. Ever buy anything in a hospital gift shop? They can afford it.

The background behind the glass is painted (burgandy) Dibond - offset 3/16". The photo was glued to the Dibond but there is a .25" gold leaf outline on the glass that frames the photo.

[John Grenier]

So what did you get for it?

John

[DAVE SMITH]

Great Job Raymond.
Nice looking sign!

Dave.

[Raymond Chapman]

Selling price was $2,350.00, but I didn't keep a very accurant account of time and materials so I'm not sure if we made any money or not. Profit was not my main objective in doing this project.

This was considered our Yellow Page ad for the year. We just use the smallest ad they offer every year, but use jobs like these to get our name before the public. I'm not really interested in making a bunch of money off them. This is only done once a year or so - kind of like priming the pump for other work.

This hospital has thousands of people walking through this hallway every day. We have done several other jobs for them and most are located in this main foyer area. Several years ago we did all the signs in their 100th anniversary alcove.

Photographs of these signs are prominently displayed in our showroom, so many folks comment that they have seen them. And our name is on each one also. We have sold other work to some of the doctors and administrators.

These signs offer us much more publicity than any yellow page ad.

While we were installing this one a lot of people stopped and commented on how nice it was and several of the "big wigs" were called to come down and look at it. I'm sure it will make us more money in the future.

Thanks for your nice comments. Tomorrow I'm meeting with a lawyer who wants a glass gold and glue chip sign - I may be on a roll.

[Mike Jackson]

Raymond,
Your price sounds fair to me. I normally find the price I might figure on a completed sign is different than when I am looking at a pencil or line drawing. You probably only have about $350 in the actual materials, so the rest is just labor, overhead and profit. Assuming you didn't take forerver, and sit their watching the glue chip all day, you should have done fine. Custom jobs like that are hard to price.

Nice job, by the way.
Mike Jackson