Panels I - Construction

Before moving your materials into your printing and laminating space, make sure to clean dust and particles off with a brush and/or vaccum. These these little specks can contaminate other "clean" machinery (computers, printers etc.) or get laminated over top of, leaving small bumps on your finished product.


To ensure straight clean cuts, concentrate on the fence, not the blade. Pressure should be exerted on the diagonal towards the fence to the right of the blade. Feeding from the opposite side can cause binding, over-reaching and wobble.


Make sure that your measurements are accurate, and use a rip fence and the factory edge to produce square corners and straight sides. Feed all materials through the blade to the other side.


It also helps to have a pair of extra hands when cutting large materials. Set your blade so that the gullets between the teeth are at the same height as the top of the material.



With large pieces of material, it is very helpful to have something to act as side and through supports. Here we improvised with overturned material carts, boosted to height with scrap wood and held in place with cinder blocks. Please plan your cuts well, keep your space clean, check your access and movement and review safety guidelines.
Panel construction began this week. For "Cold War Berlin" panels are being designed using Adobe Illustrator with a combination of historic photographs, original text and graphics, and custom colours. On of the most important aspects to exhibit development in public institutions is budget, and for construction, that means maximizing use of material. Our substrate, white Gatorfoam, comes in 4' x 8' sheets. Our original panel dimensions were 2' x 3', but were adjusted very slightly to allow for the kerf of the table saw blade (1/8"). AI documents are easily resized before printing, laminating and mounting. Excess material will be used for smaller panels, labels etc.

Sign Vinyl & Stencils III

To add more detail and atmosphere to the rooms, several more memorable and/or common border area signs were reproduced using sign vinyl.

Where applicable, fonts were matched or photos were modified using "Live Trace" in AI to produce a workable stencil file. The lines have been thickened for easier viewing. Files must be "clean" (i.e. solid workable lines, without ghosting etc.) to be properly cut with the CAMM-1.

Below are several of the finished stencils which will be place above doorways throughout the exhibit. The effect is quite good.





My personal favourite...


The "Cold War Berlin" logo was also reproduced in this fashion using AI and the Roland CAMM-1. Overall, these pieces will build on the atmosphere of divided Berlin and help to transport visitors to that time and place. I was very pleased with the look of this piece, and after a number of modifications in AI, it was cut out without incident.


Colours must be printed separately and assembled later when using a sign vinyl cutter. More to follow...