The Dale C. Maley Family Web Site

The welcome sign in our old park is worn out.......

I want to design and build a new sign, which will use a printed decal glued to a 3/16" thick piece of aluminum.  I want to keep the existing posts for hanging the sign, including the two eyebolts at the top. I used Sketchup to design the new sign.

I first went to McMaster-Carr online, but I could not find a product that would work.  I next went to my local Ace Hardware store in Fairbury.  They had a D-ring that will work great for this application!

My design is basically a 2x4 pressure treated frame. It has 1/2 sheet of 1/2" exterior plywood glued to 1/2x1/2" grooves routed in the 2x4 frame.  I made 1" quarter-round molding from pressure-treated 1 inch thick deck boards.  The quarter-round holds the thin mural in place on the front, and I put molding on the back, to keep the sign balanced from a weight perspective.  I used (2) 2.5" long deck screws at each corner joint.  The outside dimensions of the frame are roughly 96x24 inches.

I used Titebond II glue because the sign will be outdoors.  Hopefully, my plywood glued design will make a rigid frame, that will not sag in the center over years of time.

The wood frame got 2 coats of Zinsser's white paint.  Then a coat of grey latex exterior paint.

I had some heavy rope that I used to help me lower the old sign.  I basically tied off both ends of the sign with the rope, then attached each rope to my Ford F150 truck.  I removed the nuts from the hangar bolts on each side, then gradually lowered each side of the sign using the rope.  It worked pretty slick!

I wanted to re-used the old hanger bolts on my new sign.  But when I removed them from the old sign, they were badly rusted.  I was able to find new hanger bolts at our Fairbury Fastener store.

A local company has a 52 inch wide printer they use to print decals.  Their main business is decorating 18-wheelers with the decals, but the printer can be used to make great signs as well. I provide the art work, and this company prints up the decals, then mounts them to 3/16" aluminum composite material.  The cost to print this sign was $300.

I  used the same 2 rope method in reverse that I used to take down the old sign.  A young man who lives near the park gave me a hand in pulling the ropes and raising the sign. It worked very well.

All-in-all, things went pretty well on this project.  The new sign is a big improvement over the old sign, and it should last for many years.