This is one of a series of company signs I've made. Another is the Adzerk sign. This one is for James, the CEO, for whom I've been working for almost ten years as of writing this in 2026. He's a great guy, and I was happy to make him this sign, which hangs behind him in all his Zoom calls. Another version of it hangs in the Charlottesville office.
The interesting part of the construction is the K, which consists of two bent pieces of aluminum. Bending them was a real challenge, mainly because I didn't know enough to use 5052, which bends much more nicely than 6061, which is what I used here. I had to build a custom bending jig for my 20 ton shop press, and even then it didn't work until I annealed the aluminum first.
The first version, for Charlottesville (summer 2022)
The Charlottesville office's version came first. It started on the computer in June 2022, where I was playing around with the design and wondering about proportions. Here's a render of one of the versions I tried (this one has Durham, NC in the corner).
In July I kept playing with the nesting software, which figures out how to pack the letters into the smallest space on a plate. It's kind of fun to see what it comes up with.
Then I cut the logo out of quarter-inch aluminum on the plasma table. The first cut failed, so I recut over the failure. It wasn't perfectly aligned, hence the slight irregularities, but it's a very good cut given that.
Here's the lowercase k after powder coating. I obviously put a bit too much powder on, but generally I like the way it came out.
Learning to bend
This is where the bending lesson began. My first attempt at a bending jig was a pair of angled cherry blocks on a plywood base, with steel straps to hold things together.
For the lettering on the panel I used a vinyl cutter, and a test of the vinyl transfer, "Charlottesville, VA" in white, went fine.
That afternoon, assembly began. This is the big navy panel with the vinyl lettering on it.
Then I tried the first bend. Well, that didn't completely work. The K needs a 60 degree angle, and it is very difficult to bend; the aluminum came out scuffed and damaged right where it folded.
The next morning, the letters were cut out and sitting on the bandsaw table under a layer of aluminum swarf.
And here they are after cleanup, just waiting for holes for the mounting hardware before powder coating.
A few days later I tried annealing the aluminum before bending it. That definitely helped. I still needed to see if rounding over some of the edges would minimize the damage.
A few days after that, the angle was close enough.
The Charlottesville sign, take two (September and October 2022)
I came back to the Charlottesville sign in the fall.
The Kevel logo, plus "Charlottesville, VA", on a navy panel: white aluminum letters, and a K made of two folded orange aluminum ribbons. I built it in the last days of September and the first days of October 2022, and finished it with a few minutes of sneaking away to the shop on the morning of October 3, since I was going to Charlottesville the next day. It still needed hanging hardware, and perhaps a few touches of paint to fix the flaws that probably only I can see.
Bending the ribbon (September 2022)
The folded ribbon of the K needed aluminum flat bar bent into tight hairpins. This is a new and hopefully improved bending jig, built into my hydraulic shop press. I would test it later.
Well, that's what I get for being impatient. I bent a bar before it was ready for it, and it cracked right through at the bend.
The fix was a few hundred degrees of heat and a few tons of pressure. I think I salvaged it. Not the broken one, although I thought about welding it.
By the end of September the letters were cut and the two folded pieces of the ribbon were roughed out, laid on a board next to the printed layout. Getting there.
Powder coating (October 2022)
On October 1 I laid everything out for powder coating in my cardboard-lined booth, with the letters on a baking tray, ready for the oven.
And done: the letters in white. One minor defect, but I can live with it.
The two halves of the K got an orange base coat the same day. It still needed a top coat.
Standoffs and finishing
I was going to make the standoffs from aluminum, but they were giving me trouble, so I decided to 3D print them instead. Here they are, freshly spray painted green.
And here is the K with its top coat on. It's kind of over the top, but I think I like it. A picture doesn't quite capture it, so here's a video.
After that I just needed to paint the standoffs, make a few for the logo, and assemble the thing.
And here it is on the wall in the Charlottesville office.
Yeah - there was a little issue a few weeks after it got hung. One of my coworkers sorted it out, though.
James's sign (fall 2023)
More than a year later I made the one for James. In September 2023 I cut the parts on the plasma cutter, and here they are fresh out of the water table.
In October I put together a full-size layout out of taped-together sheets of printed paper on the floor.
Later that month I was at the makerspace and used the laser, the one tool I didn't have at home (I fixed that later), to make a hardboard template to help with aligning the pieces.
In November came the bending, and having done it before helped, though there were still a couple of things I had to remind myself of. The test bend went fine, shown here next to one of the laser-cut template pieces.
A second attempt a bit later that day went fine too.
The next morning it was coming along, with a single bent and polished k mounted on the navy board and still a bunch left to do.
I got the mounting hardware sorted out, so there are no more fragile 3D printed standoffs like the ones on the Charlottesville sign. Next up was powder coating.
And on November 26, 2023, it was done. Sorry it took so long, James.
