BIG CANOE RESORT COMMUNITY

It takes work to maintain the signs in an 8,000 acre resort with multiple golf courses, equestrian center, and many other upper tier amenities such as Big Canoe. We began installing the initial sign package in the early 1970's and have returned between other contractors over the years. Follow us through our last major service of this development where many of the original signs we installed decades earlier were still in service. We hope this section will make it obvious why finding a single quality company to maintain your branding is important. On the following pages we will show some of our other original signs that were still in service almost forty years later.

MAIN SIGN MADE IN 1972

Your main entrance sign is your customers first impression. This sign was built for Big Canoe in the early 1970s. At the time they only had one entrance for residents and a second for contractors keeping trucks off main residential roads or encountering issues with the covered bridge. This main entrance sign which was built to last is still in service today. The central logo is a custom built aluminum structure that has stood the test of time. The sign has seen regular service over the years such as the aluminum letters being replaced once. The main structural and design features are original to when the sign was built.

VARIOUS CUSTOM AMENITIES SIGNS

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All of these signs have the wood grain texture of sandblasted signs but because every board has a different grain structure and often one board in a blank may look totally different grain structure from the rest for an odd look. We used a name brand U.S. made CNC router with a five figure software package that allows us to select the grain structure we want then render it in three dimensions on our monitors so we know exactly how each sign will come off the machine. Some use a "grain frame" which looks like a big harp with wires placed between the blank and use a sandblaster but the signs all have a series of totally unnatural straight lines across the background rather than an organic real wood look.

CUSTOM TRAFFIC & INFORMATION SIGNS

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You will notice some of these signs have all green borders and others its painted burgundy across the top. Our original design was for the all green background and borders but during installation of phase two signs someone with pull in the P.O.A. convinced them they needed to be painted burgundy across the top to "match" the burgundy top rail we put on all large signs. We suggested adding a separate burgundy element like the other signs if they wanted them to be consistent but they chose to ask us to paint the top of each without authorizing additional funds for the extra work to revisit every sign already installed twice to put two coats of burgundy. We are used to changes on signs, especially when deal with committees as clients satisfaction is more important than ours but try to give honest opinions on what the better long term look will be.

STREET SIGNS

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Except for the post design, color and blanks routed on a CNC controlled router instead of free hand, each street blade was made in much the same manner of original street blades from the 1970's. We hand selected each piece of western cedar to get the best boards possible from the main east coast distributer, not an end of the supply line lumber store. Our cedar supplier handles most of the cedar distributed east of the Mississippi River and allows us to hand select each board. All obvious splits in boards were trimmed to solid wood then each blank went through a planer to ensure they were as flat, same thickness and smooth as possible. They were placed in our CNC router for machining liters and logos before being handed off to two men who spent at least an hour per blank carefully hand sanding each letter, inspecting each board for any additional work before priming and paint. The mill work on the posts can be seen in our millwork section.

DIRECTIONAL SIGNS

Notice above signs center and far right, the photos are same sign and taken as sun was facing without and with flash to show how the product we use on all of our letters in Big Canoe lights up almost like they are illuminated. There is no wandering around after dark trying to read the signs as the liters reflect almost as much light as your cars lights output right back and make them more readable than if it were daylight. To some the photo may look like some Photoshop trick but its real and hard to photograph as if wait till its too dark the flash of the camera is so bright it causes the photograph to totally blow up and wash out. The coating used is similar to a modern glass smalt used for hundreds of years where sign craftsmen added ground glass to their paint or glued to backgrounds of signs.

BELOW SIGNS SHOW THE REFLECTIVE PROPERTIES OF OUR COATING

The two above photos are of the same sign, first is with camera flash on and second with flash off. All signs in we have done in Big Canoe have a proprietary product made by 3M which is quite expensive and hard to work with but reflects majority of light from vehicles so that after dark there is no trouble reading the signs. In a development like this which is confusing to navigate it would be unsafe to have people stopped at every turn or split in the road trying to read what the signs say after sunset. It adds cost in materials and labor but is worth every dime when some elderly person is able to read your signs and move on after sunset. There are other products on the market that are advertised to do the same thing but in our testing have not found any that reflect as much light as the 3M brand so we suggest if this is needed in your resort to stipulate 3M brand name reflective coatings in your sign standards.

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