Signs of the Times - December 2012 - 8

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A New Branch on Kentucky’s Bourbon Trail
Along with basketball and bluegrass, bourbon has long been regarded as an essential part of Kentucky’s legacy. Many wellestablished distilleries proudly proclaim themselves destinations on Kentucky’s Bourbon Trail. A new Trail entrant made a big splash onto the scene, thanks in part to compelling signage. Town Branch Bourbon opened its new facility in September, adjacent to its parent company, Alltech Inc., and the Kentucky Ale brewery. To give Town Branch’s premises a stately quality, the shop enlisted Ruggles Signs (Versailles, KY) to create two signs that juxtapose one another with traditional and modern character. On the building, Ruggles installed LED-lit, 3.5-in.-deep channel letters – illuminated with SloanLED’s VL Plus short, white modules – flush to the facility’s window mullions. To bedeck the building’s stone entry façade, Ruggles CNC-routed antique-finish bronze, which is anchored to the structure.

All Systems Go
To be successful in today’s competitive market, a signshop must differentiate itself from the competition. Dan Crannie, owner of Flushing, MI’s Signs by Crannie, has done so by partnering with a customer with an affinity for unusual or historic aircraft, military and government equipment. After having procured a Polaris missile – a 31-ft.-long, nuclear-armed, sub-launched projectile that Lockheed built for the Navy in the 1960s – the customer contacted the production staff from A&E’s Shipping Wars show, which tracks the goings-on of six independent shipping contractors who vie to handle challenging freight (and a sizeable paycheck). He wanted to sell the piece to a museum or movie-production company, but first he needed Crannie and his shop to restore it to its original, vintage condition. “The missile was in fair to poor condition; that’s why they needed us,” Crannie said. “We had to clear out space on our two-acre storage lot to allow room for the camera crew and spectators. We were able to find a lot of information about the Polaris on the web, so it wasn’t difficult to prepare the design.” After the Shipping Wars crew offloaded the missile with two hydraulic cranes, Crannie’s fabricators began their process by MIG-welding a new nosecone to replace the deteriorated original. Then, they sandblasted the body and coated the missile with Akzo Nobel’s Grip-Gard system. Next, they applied a coat of cleaning compound, and then they applied Washprimer self-etching primer, GripGard BC singlestage coating and Grip-Gard Plus clearcoat. All spraypainting was done over paint mask cut on a Gerber plotter. At presstime, Crannie said he wasn’t sure of the exact airing date of the Shipping Wars episode.

8 SIGNS OF THE TIMES / DECEMBER 2012 / www.signweb.com

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Signs of the Times - December 2012

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