Stainless Steel Sign

Today we installed a sign for some of my favorite customers: Josh and Melissa Priola. I love working for them because they value and appreciate our work at Custom Iron By Josh, and they are always full of complements and appreciation.

The sign that we created is for their new restaurant “Street Breads”. Street Breads is a cutting edge sandwich shop that specializes in high-end all natural sandwiches. I can’t wait to try out the food.

To start their project, Mr. Priola brought me a few pictures to catch me up to speed on the atmosphere he wanted to create. As I thought of a design, I knew that I realized that a natural look would be great for this project. So I took a solid plate; 4′ tall by 20′ wide, and sandblasted it to create a smooth finish. Our local steel company, Superior Supply & Steel, plasma cut Josh’s logo “Street Breads” into the plate. I wanted to give the sign a little bling so I used stainless steel to push through the cut out areas. I’ve never used stainless in this manor before–so it was a learning experience. I called a friend of mine, Dean Curfman to ask a few questions. As always Dean had plenty of good advice to share with me. I met Curfman at a NOMMA convention in Los Angeles, CA last year. Dean was doing a demonstration on copper reprocess work. I’ve done a few reprocesses since his demonstration but I always used copper.

One of the keys to doing the stainless reprocess was getting it back to a shiny polished look after the heating process. Dean recommended using something called a pickling paste. The pickling paste wasn’t the easiest thing to use. The warnings on the bottle were somewhat scary, so I bought plenty of protective gear. Once I had the stainless welded to the back of the sign, I heated the stainless in small areas and pounded it through the cut out areas.

After all the forging and prep work was finished we used a urethane clear coat, and that was our process!