Powder Coating A Sign For A Gift

I had to wait to post this until after Christmas. We came up with the idea to make a sign for my Dad’s work shop. My wife came up with the idea after the last time my parent’s visited. My Dad kept using the word epistemological. We thought it would be fun to make the sign with that word in it. After some time searching online for a suitable sign, we decided to make our own.

First part was to work with a metal laser cutting company to get the sign layers cut.

I have a friend that has a family run company,Snail Motorsports, that specializes in powder coating smaller engine parts. After talking to Juan, he recommended getting the sign cut from cold rolled steel to keep the preparation to a minimum.

My father was in the Navy so we decided to go with something as close to the Navy blue and yellow for the layer colors. The outside layers would be blue with an inside of yellow.

Three Layers Of The Sign

At Snail Motorsports they have some expensive equipment for doing the powder coating such as a spray booth and large oven, but for this project I asked Juan to use equipment that was in the price range of a do it yourself person.

When I got there in the morning Juan had already done some initial preparations, and had finished the yellow middle layer of the sign.

Finished Middle Layer

After the yellow powder was cleaned from the powder coating gun, ultramarine blue was loaded for coating. He had a simple way to make the powder coating gun more portable.

Powder Coating Gun
Loaded With Blue Powder

Once the sign was grounded the blue powder was applied.

Applying Blue Powder

More Blue Powder

Next the two plates were baked at 400 degrees F to cure the powder.

Baking The Outer Sign Plates

A second coat was put on the outside plates. Once that was done I used some epoxy to adhere the three layers together.

Finished Sign