Kiley's Garage Sign

Have you ever known a guy that is so awesome that he would open his heart and home to a rag tag group of near total strangers in the name of brotherhood alone? What about a dude who just gets it? I'm talking about the type of person who works full time bettering humanity, spends his off time creating motorcycle uber-amazing-ness, and just happens to rock an epic level chin mounted push broom.

I just happen to know a guy named Kiley, who just happens to fit that very description. Although I did not personally get to attend the monumental occasion that brought an army of vintage bike nuts to rest at Kiley's Garage last fall, I was inspired by the stories that grew out of it. I wanted to make him something just to say that someone noticed he was being top-notch. I started freehand sketching on a piece of catalpa, and after a while carved a ribbon. The idea was to incorporate "Kiley's Garage" into a hanging sign to put in front of the the now infamous shop where all the shenanigans in question transpired. Due to the size of the scavenged stock I had to work with, "Kiley's" is all that would fit on the first piece.

With this piece locked in, it would require actual planning to design the rest of the piece. I hauled myself over to the Do The Ton forum, the place where I first got in with this crew of crazy gear heads, and sought out some advice. After getting several suggestions there emerged a clear choice.

Justin Longhorn, as he is known on the interweb, suggested a tree of life design. Kiley had mentioned wanting one in front of the shop. Done deal.

After some research the idea came into focus and the cutting began. After the rough shaping the disc got planed down flat enough to take the design.

 

Then the design was sketched on, and holes drilled in the negative spaces. I used a scroll saw, but the job could have been done with a coping saw. You could even stick with knives and chisels if you were under equipped and dedicated enough.

The bulk of the work on this piece came in the form of sawing the blank and chiseling the details.

I worked in short bursts for months. It would not have taken very long, start to finish, but I have a habit of jumping from project to project. The overall time was also inflated due to the need to stop and fabricate chisels and knives. Since I had never done anything like this before, I was learning as I went. The methods and tools evolved along the way, and I worked on a few simpler practice pieces also.

The end result was agreeable enough.

So the last thing to do was to carve and letter the lower "Garage" section.

I left this one pretty simple. I kept the same vintage tattoo font from the top plaque. If its not broke, why screw with it till you break it. I bend that rule enough to understand it's importance well. That is to say I break way more than I fix, but it is usually because of a learning curve I'm too impatient to respect.

Once all the pieces were stained they were set up for a quick pic.  All that is left to do is string the pieces together, and ship the whole thing off to it's new home.

Even though this project took way longer than it should have, and the learning curve was a headache, the fact that it is for such a stand up guy made the completion that much more rewarding. In the end that is what it is all about. An epic gent gets some positive reinforcement, I learned something, I get to share it with you guys, and not having idle hands keeps me off the streets.

Incidentally, here is a quickie of a knife and the chisels and scrapers that were used on this project. I think a follow up post of the process used to forge, shape, harden, and temper these little guys is a must. It is a fun project that doesn't take much in the way of tooling up or experience.   These were all made of found and scavenged metal ranging from cut nails, to post tension foundation cables, and even springs from an old mattress. Once you have the basic idea on these you can easily tweak the design and hardness for all kinds of uses, so stay tuned.