How I carve

All my signs are made by hand, the letters are first traced onto the workpiece, then a mallet and a selection of chisels and gouges are used to carve them out. If the letters need to be coloured, then they'll be primed and painted by hand. The sign may then receive a UV resistant oil finish. Half of the chisels I use are at least a generation old, but the mallet I use, I made myself, from exceptional pieces of Laburnum rescued from the firewood pile!

Here are a few photos showing me at work carving a big sign (click on any picture to see a larger view):

Some of the tools I use and a work in progress.

Being on camera isn't my favourite activity.

The first word of the sign, in Trajan Pro font.

Not all the work is done with a mallet. With a sharp chisel, it's possible to do the finer cuts by pushing only.

Later that day the sign gets it's first coat of oil. Looking good!

Are they really hand carved?

Many signs nowadays, even some of those those misleadingly offered as "handcrafted", or "hand engraved", are made with machines (routers, lasers, sandblasting, etc.). I have deliberately gone in the opposite direction with my carving, my goals are to create truly hand made signs of the highest quality, along with excellent customer service. Each sign I make represents hours of careful layout and precision chisel work. Machine made signs are almost certainly not made with this much care or attention to detail.