Dimensional sign with Saw Blade

Greatbrook Custom Tiber Sawing and Planing

Sometimes when we are lucky a sign job feels just right in the end. This one started out when a local saw mill changed hands. The office manager was someone we had done business with before and had recommended Keene Signworx http://signworx.com/for the work. The mill does a lot of sawing for timber framers and also does custom timber sizing with their 4 sided planner capable of planning a 60' long beam in one pass. Enough of that, needless to say I liked the place.  After talking about the new sign they said no one sees the existing sign. 
I came up with the idea of using a saw blade and making it look like it was slicing a beam and figured I could make the blade easy enough out of any one of the panels and composites we use in the shop. I designed the sign with a 52" diameter blade since it worked for a good scale and because I knew that was a common saw mill blade size, at least in rural New England. In a call to the mill I happened to ask if they had any old blades around and they did.  It weighted a ton and after getting it back to the shop I pondered for about a month about how to finish it. Since it was mild steel I would have to clean sand, or sandblast, prime and paint both sides and that was not in the budget so I decided to go with the beautiful deep rust it had acquired from years of sitting in the barn. This would make lettering difficult since neither painted or vinyl lettering would stick to the surface rust. This meant a raised letter made sense. We did a double layer Dibond letter with a smaller bottom layer so we could clean and bond, (with Lord Adhesive) the letters to cleaned sections on the blade. To this we added 8" square oak posts and 4" X 9" carved cedar beams for the cross piece. I fretted about this sign for weeks but when we were done everyone was happy with it including me.