Letters, Metal and Brick for the World's Biggest Bookstore

I've been spending a lot of time sanding and smoothing the sign letters to try and remove their rough edges as best I can. I must admit it was rather a tedious job and I only worked on two or three letters at a time. I figured if I tried to complete too many at once, I'd start to rush, and that's when I'd do something really bad and have to start again. I'm pretty sure my friend Vince would tell me that cutting out these letters was a job best done by a laser cutter and I'd have to agree :-) With a laser cutter one could probably easily match the exact font, and turn a big cutting and sanding job into a light snack. Maybe next time I'll have to look into it.

I pulled out just about all the sanding tools and  files I had for this task. With all the different shapes and curves I figured I'd need a corresponding big set of smoothing tools. Probably the most useful for this job was the flex-i-file - the backwards C-shaped aluminum tool on the green cutting mat. It's basically a frame that holds taut a strip of sanding film. It was especially useful for sanding in tight corners such as those found on the letters r, k and d.

Once the letters were done, I worked on sizing up the metal sign board that they'll be attached to and the lower brick wall at street level. The brick wall is cut from a brick styrene sheet. The signboard is a 'metal' corrugated 0.040 inch styrene sheet from Evergreen plastics cut down to the approximate size for this building. I didn't have enough on hand and have ordered another piece to finish. This is going to be a big building - probably around 30 inches long.