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(February 2009) posted on Tue Feb 24, 2009

A Kentucky sign prepares to welcome the equestrian world.

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By Steve Aust

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A longstanding joke has proclaimed that Kentucky is home to “beautiful horses and fast women.” I won’t comment on the latter half, but the Bluegrass State – particularly its central region – holds a well-deserved reputation as the epicenter of the U.S. horse-breeding industry (the 135-year history of the Kentucky Derby at Louisville’s Churchill Downs hasn’t hurt, either).

Augmenting this tradition, Georgetown’s Kentucky Horse Park landed the Alltech FEI 2010 World Equestrian Games, the quadrennial Super Bowl of the equine-sports world, which features dressage, vaulting and several other competitive disciplines.

Alltech officials hired Versailles, KY-based Ruggles Sign Co. to fabricate a sign that promotes the event, which takes place in September and October of next year.

According to Jason Elmore, a Ruggles designer, the company fine tuned the existing graphics used to lay out 24 x 7-ft. sign with SA Intl.’s Flexi®Sign Pro software and developed router templates with the company’s EnRoute® 3 program. Using the shop’s brake-forming equipment, TIG welder and two Multicam CNC routers, Ruggles fashioned the sign’s “skin” using 0.125-, 0.09- and 0.063-in.-thick aluminum and built the support structure with aluminum tubing, plate and angle material.

For the horse’s silhouette, the shop used 3-in.-diameter, Schedule 40 aluminum pipe. Fabricators coated all metal with Matthews acrylic-polyurethane paint. To replicate masonry for the monument sign, Ruggles incorporated Texture Plus faux-stone, HDU interlocking panels.

Elmore said Ruggles recently purchased an EFI-VUTEk Press Vu UV printer that it anticipates using to print directly onto prepainted panels to provide signage for the Games.