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(November 2009) posted on Mon Oct 19, 2009

Ontario’s Abracadabra Signs brews distinctive building graphics.

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By Steve Thomas Greer

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Through the years, our shop’s unusual portfolio has earned us the reputation of being unafraid to tackle virtually any project. The owners of Niagara’s Best, a brewpub in Niagara Falls, ON, Canada, called us with a project that was exotic even by our standards.
The establishment, which serves nine lagers, ales, pilsners and stouts – as well as a series of seasonal beers – wanted to promote its signature brew, Blonde Premium Ale. Jamie Burns, Niagara’s Best’s owner, found us on the Internet and approached us. He asked us to create a 10-ft.-tall, supersized rendering of a tap perched atop the entrance, which would feature the upper rim of a fizzy “glass” of beer as a façade above the door.
To serve as a model, Niagara’s Best provided a tap handle, which features a curvaceous, leggy blonde figurine on top. Of course, an 11-in.-tall figurine as a model for a 10-ft.-tall project requires major scaling. I took a picture of the tap, scanned it into my PC as vector art and detailed the design using CorelDraw X3.

Tapped out
To ensure our structure wouldn’t obscure the pub’s entrance, we created a template out of cardboard that replicates the actual door. Then, we began carving the tap’s form from expanded-polystyrene foam (EPS), which we formed on our MultiCam 1000 CNC router. Next, we bonded five, 4-in.-thick, EPS layers together with compressed, spray-foam insulation.
The spray foam cures to a soft finish, which made carving the project easier. To build up the sculpture, we applied Magic Smooth, a sculpting epoxy, with trowels and other assorted paint-scraping tools. To fortify the tap sculpture, we built a 2 in. x 2-ft., steel frame into its structure.
Finally, we applied the graphics – Niagara’s Best’s Blonde Premium ale logo – to the tap. We produced it on our Roland DGA Corporation SolJet Pro III 54-in.-wide printer using Avery’s Easy Apply RS air-egress media. To protect the graphic, we applied Avery’s DOL 1370 luster-finish, cast overlaminate.