Thinking Outside the Box with Cold Cast HDU:

When Black Market Furniture approached Joe Putjenter at Artistic Sign & Design wanting a custom, rustic looking conference table for their client (Lakeside Auto Recyclers), he came up with an idea for a highly dimensional, rugged looking solution that wouldn’t break the bank. Having done many cold-casted plaques using a combination of CORAFOAM® HDU and Plate-All’s sprayable metal finish, he knew he could create a custom routed sign made from HDU that could give the appearance of a metal finish without the cost and weight.

Joe routed the logo out on his CNC machine with 20lb CORAFOAM, but hand-carved and sanded in the finer details to make it more realistic. The surface was then primed using a single coat of Evercoat Slick Sand polyester primer. To create a worn bronze look as requested by Lakeside Auto Recyclers, Joe used a process called cold casting using Plate All, a copper metal finish spray. After spraying, the copper needs to be sandblasted away to remove any existing binder. Since the look he was after was more rustic, he used an acid patina to create a quick aging greenish final look. All of the high points were polished using steel wool to make the metal appear more realistic. 

The additional dimensional lettering was done with traditional gold-leafing, and the entire plaque was then installed into the steel base of the conference table using small amounts of silicone. The final step was fitting a piece of glass over the top of the plaque to protect the verdigris look they worked so hard to achieve.

Artistic Sign & Design specializes in custom dimensional signage and always goes the extra mile with his signs through a combination of extensive experience and using only top-quality products. At a visit to ISA years ago, Joe was first introduced to CORAFOAM and after evaluating its performance with hand-carving, he made the switch and hasn’t looked back. According to Joe, “DUNA is by far the highest-quality HDU product on the market. It carves better, machines better (with little to no dust), and is the strongest and most resilient.”

You can see additional details about Artistic Sign & Design at: http://www.artisticsign.net/