Running a hands-on commercial sign shop involves doing many jobs. It is extremely hard to be efficient and productive when your job description keeps changing. From designing layouts to sign fabrication, from working up bids to sign installation, switching gears several times a day is quite normal for me.

 

But, no matter what the task, I cannot afford to be wasting time, and I am always looking for ways to get the job done faster. If there are practical short cuts and methods to improve my efficiency, I am trying to find them. This is true even on simple jobs, like the letter installs we’ll be looking at in this Shop Talk. And though these simple time saving steps don’t necessarily seem like much, when added together and used on any number of install jobs, the time saved can mean a significant boost to the bottom line since any time saved on one job means I can be on to the next one that much sooner.

 

 

The two letter installs shown here were for one client who was about to move into a new facility. One set of letters and cutout graphics went across the front of his new building, and the other one was go on the east side, which also had highway frontage. They were flat cut, powder coated .090 aluminum letters and other symbols, mounted directly on a metal building facia. 

 

One thing we do not do is put any type of track on a building to mount letters like this one, which means we will use shop-made supports, Z-shaped, to go behind and support the letters where they have a corrugated ridge to mount to. These are made from small strips of .063 aluminum formed on a brake. I do not believe you can buy these off the shelf, but I can make as many as I need fairly quickly, and there is a little trick to this.

 

The corrugations on new metal buildings are usually 1" deep, so the Z-shaped supports are made from 3" long strips of painted aluminum bent 1" x 1" x 1" in a “Z”. They are from ¾" to 1" wide as well. On our foot shear we’ll cut the 3" long strips. Sometimes we’ll go ahead and punch a hole about ½" from one end to make zipping them in a wall with self drilling screws a bit easier.

 

 

I do not measure or mark the bend at all, but merely put a guide on the front of our small brake, which looks like a small piece of aluminum angle but is the exact width to mark a 1" distance from the bending jaw of the brake. I can line up multiple strips at one time, then bend them all at once. They are then flipped upside down, turned around 180 degrees, and bent the second time. Very quickly I can have enough of these clips made for at least a couple of jobs. If they are going on a dark colored wall, they will be spray painted to match the wall before taking them to the jobsite, usually with just spray can paint.

 

The first part of this job we installed was a set of letters with two large symbols to go right across the front of the building above an awning, fortunately one that could support my weight (I did put some boards down, but hardly used them). Two things were done to expedite this basic install, and that was to make a print that would give us all pertinent measurements with little time or effort put into making that drawing. 

 

This was done by using a set of colored bars, all scaled to 2" wide in different colors, in colored groups of six bars, which would indicate a distance of one foot per group. This may sound silly, but I used to take lot of measurements to a job or have to lay the parts out on location and measure them there, getting a center line and distance between each part.

 

Now, a simple computer drawing with a few colored icons in it tells me all I need to know. I don’t have to measure anything because each bar is 2", each group is a foot, and anything in between these markings is easily estimated close enough. Once out on the job, the drawing is taped handily to the building and moved around with the installer, usually me. 

 

 

 

Because we were working on the gable end of the building, the centerline was obvious, and the other measurements of how far up or down, and what distance in between each item was clearly illustrated by our drawing. As we went along, when a letter needed to be supported by a Z-bracket, it was zipped in place on the wall using hex-head self-drilling sheet metal screws. Also, the letters were quickly and temporarily set in place using a couple of the same type screw.

 

Once all the letters and cutouts were placed and verified to be in exactly the right location, the rest of the fasteners were put in place. The permanent hardware was not hex-head screws, which are too obvious from the ground, but small aluminum rivets since they would hardly show on the surface of the powder coated red letters. At the last, the rivets are painted to match the letters, of course.

 

The second part of this job involved another shortcut that does not come up every day, but certainly is worth mentioning because it probably saved an hour of time or more. This was making an install template to show exactly how to place a set of letters in a perfect arc, perfectly spaced from each other without having to measure much of anything on the job site. 

 

Since these letters were cut on a waterjet, I planned ahead and designed a template to be cut from corrugated plastic when the waterjet cutting was done. It was designed to be cut in two parts, cut from one 4' x 8' sheet of plastic. If you were contracting out the cutting, (we cut ours at our WPC Services shop), it would cost very little to cut the template along with your letters. To cut the large two-piece pattern, on our machine, running at its fastest speed, took about four minutes cutting time. So, this is not costly to do at all, and our template saved making numerous measurements on the job site and eliminated any possibility of mistakes in the process. 

 

Our template showed the placement of every letter by defining the bottom edge of each letter in a perfect arc, and indicating the top of the state of Texas shape that went with them. Once the correct location of the pattern on that wall was determined, a few self-drilling screws held it there while all elements were accurately installed.

 

The same Z-brackets were used to support these letters, and since they were smaller, most of them required at least one. I normally hold the brackets with a vise grip tool or small channel-lock pliers to keep them from spinning and scratching the wall, or tearing up my fingers. This job went very quickly. Again, it was mostly because there was little measuring to do on the jobsite and we could start mounting letters right away.

 

This project cost the client approximately $2,500 and was really a bargain for all the visibility and durability he was getting for his money. For us, they are easy jobs. By applying as many time-saving steps as possible, we are able to get to the finish line faster and with a better profit margin for our efforts, exactly what the doctor ordered.