Mounting idea's for large sign

[Shane Warnick]

Allright sports fans,

I have been asked to make a fairly large, and fairly heavy, sign. 20' wide, 60" tall, and 3/8" mild steel. Will be cut as two 5' x 10' panels. Not a lot of cutting, just some text, that's about it. Company logo for their entrance. Text will be cut as a negative.

Here is the kicker. Customer has a place on the entry that they built just for the sign. It consists of a double row of split faced cinderblock, one side facing one way, the back facing, well, the other way. Capped, and supposedly (allegedly, supposedly, so they say) filled with rebar and concrete, sitting on a footer. Has a cap on the top, with some small T10 fluorescent fixtures for downlighting at night.

He wants it stood off the face of the block by 3-4", and since it's splitface block, the surface is irregular. Wants a gap along the bottom edge of 6" or so, so garbage, bird nests etc don'e get stuck up behind it and the trash can fall out the bottom. (or so he thinks)

I have a few idea's, but don't really like any of them.

Soo, what say you, oh great and all knowing masses. How would you skin this bear???


Thanks in advance for your time on this.

Shane

[KIDTech]

One time I built a very heavy sign that hung 4" out from the wall. What I did and it worked very well was built "hanger brackets" and welded them to the sign. I then sunk threaded anchors into the wall that lined up with the brackets on the sign, a lot of measuring to make sure everything lined up perfectly so that the threaded rod anchor would fit through the holes in the brackets and fastened it down with a nylon nut. This would not be done very easily alone or without some sort of lift though. You could calculate the forces that would be acting upon the sign to figure out the bracket and anchor material to make sure everything was going to be safe.

[rdj357]

Drill and epoxy anchor 3/4" allthread studs where you want to have mount points. Weld brackets on back of sign, keyhole or slotted so you can hang the sign with a crane or sign truck and set it over the protruding anchors. On each anchor you'll want a nut, washer, (sign bracket), washer, nut. That way you can adjust the depth to account for the uneven surface of the split face and it will hang level/even.

[tnbndr]

I quoted a similar job just recently. I did not get the job so anchoring it became a mute point.
But my thought was to anchor some short pieces of tube on the wall with tapped and threaded set bolts. Then weld brackets to the back of the sign that would just slide into the tube sections, tighten the set bolts and leave.

[rdj357]

Here's my thought in an albeit crude picture.

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[Shane Warnick]

Thanks for the replies guys. I have been trying to figure out some way to come up with a system that works similar to a french cleat. That way I can Mount one side to the block, and just worry about keeping it level. The face of the block varies, and there is no real way to make the sign stand off EXACTLY that same distance all the way across. but that's ok, since the face of the black is irregular, you will never be able to tell. I think as long as it's close it will be good enough.

So basically, hang one side of the cleat all the way down the wall, along to top edge. The other side of the cleat will be welded to the back of the signs, then just hang them, and slide them together.

The bottom will just be some brackets, with a few bolts that will adjust in and out on the flat face of the bracket, that will be used to make the sign plumb (or hang vertically flat) so that it doesn't want to lean in back towards the wall at the bottom.

I will post some pics up when I get a design finalized and get something built.

Thanks again

Shane

[motoguy]

Thanks for the replies guys. I have been trying to figure out some way to come up with a system that works similar to a french cleat. That way I can Mount one side to the block, and just worry about keeping it level. The face of the block varies, and there is no real way to make the sign stand off EXACTLY that same distance all the way across. but that's ok, since the face of the black is irregular, you will never be able to tell. I think as long as it's close it will be good enough.

So basically, hang one side of the cleat all the way down the wall, along to top edge. The other side of the cleat will be welded to the back of the signs, then just hang them, and slide them together.

The bottom will just be some brackets, with a few bolts that will adjust in and out on the flat face of the bracket, that will be used to make the sign plumb (or hang vertically flat) so that it doesn't want to lean in back towards the wall at the bottom.

I will post some pics up when I get a design finalized and get something built.

Thanks again

Shane

Shane,

Would you mind sharing your french cleat design you came up with?

[Icoinse15]

I am also curious about that.