Tuesday, February 17, 2009

And an Englishman shall lead them...

No I haven't been made Campsite Director...yet...But I have been making directional signage for the campsite, including all 17 chalet names not to mention all the signs pointing to toilets, the adventure centre, reception, and various local features and attractions...


The process involves finding a clear and attractive font, blowing it up nice and big and then printing out a couple of thousands bits of paper with useful words and phrases like "AH" and "LLEY BA" and "ME LILY", cutting them up into bite sized chunks and then trying to reassemble them, sellotape them together and then transfer them onto pine planks with carbon paper. As with most jobs I'm finding these days, it all takes longer than you expected...

Once you have your lovely plank with the names transferred onto them, its time to break out the router and get busy! I was averaging 10mins a sign for routing alone and there were about 50 signs that's over 8 hours not including breakfast, tea time, lunch time, afternoon break, cool drink breaks, chatting breaks.....

After scraping half a tree's worth of sawdust out of each eye, I sparked up the circular saw and cut the planks into the right lengths praying that I had put the arrows pointing the right way...



Then the edges needed routing, the tops needed sanding and all 50 of them needed a coat of varnish. Whilst they were drying, I had to sink 3 poles to put signage on, which is not easy in ROCKlands I can tell you! But I managed to get the posts in, and the signs up, hopefully nobody will get lost now...

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