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As a a craft beer enthusiast, I enjoy spending time traveling and exploring different breweries. Lucky for me, the three states I have lived in are filled with lots of great breweries and allows me to get to taste lots of great beer.
During my travels, I try to get a sticker of each brewery to commemorate the journey and helps to serve as a reminder to the places I have already been. For a few years, these stickers had just piled up in a folder, never seeing the light of day. I decided I wanted to display these somehow.
Typical sticker spots are mini-fridges or car roof boxes, both of which I do not own. I needed a way to be able to hang these up on the wall without having to fully commit to leaving them in one place. I decided the best would be to put them on some kind of board to easily move with me.
Through lots of online research and messaging, I was able to find someone in my region who was willing to do a one-off personal project on his laser cutter. Joe from Precision Engraving let me come down to his shop for a tour and I got to see the signs cut in real time.
With previous experience in waterjet and CNC plasma cutting, watching the laser work was incredible. It was able to cut each of the signs in ~30 seconds. There was zero cleanup work needed, just a brief sanding before paint was applied.
After experiencing the laser cutter, I don't see myself going back to waterjet or plasma for sheet metal work any time soon.
To paint the signs, I bought some round stock and bent it into shape (Menards employee wouldn't let me use the display vice, so I had to bend by hand...). The stock was planted into the ground, allowing full 360° painting access. The stock was a bit short unfortunately, and some grass was in the way. This required me to flip the sign vertically a couple of times to ensure even coverage.
Although only the front of the sign would be showing, I wanted the back painted as well because the raw steel would quickly rust, possibly degrading the sign and start eating away at my stickers.
I ended up using 2 cans of matte black rattle-can spray paint and one can of clear coat between the three signs. This was probably overkill, but the signs began oxidizing immediately after wiping away the residue from sanding.
The most exciting part of the signs was actually getting to place the stickers and see the boards come to life! I had about 30 stickers on each board, and plan to slowly add more as I continue to explore! For the stickers that overhanged the board, I was able to take an exacto knife and carefully remove the excess. This was a skill I got quite good at through my skateboard building project from cutting oddly shaped griptapes.
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