Several weeks ago a representative from a large industrial manufacturer in our area came into the shop to see if I could give him some advice or perhaps a bit of assistance in getting their logotype done in paint on a large scale-up on a massive building they had acquired.

He told me that his painting contractor was going to do the painting, but the guy did not know what to do with a super large pounce pattern that had been sent from their main corporate office. The scale of the thing was quite large, almost 12’ by 40’ overall. The painter didn’t even know what a pounce pattern was.

Of course, pounce patterns go back at least to Michelangelo’s time and are simply paper patterns that have letters or art drawn on them, and the lines are traced and perforated with very small holes. This is done using a small hand tool with a little spur-like wheel on it, or paper patterns can be perforated with an electric pencil that burns tiny holes in the paper as it arc’s through to a grounded metal table top. In either case, after a pattern is taped in place on a wall or other surface, chalk or charcoal dust is patted through the perforation pattern leaving a mark on the wall or surface to be painted.

But, the painter was having none of it, and they wanted to contract me to just go up in a manlift, position the pattern and tape it in place, mark the wall and then trace over the marks with a Stabillo pencil so he, the painter, could mask it off and spray the logo.

I took the job, though I didn’t need it, and gave him a price of $350 to get the drawing up there if they provided the manlift as the job was higher than anything I had that could reach it.

As it turned out, the $350 would have been much too low a price, for it would later prove to be quite a chore to wrestle such a large pattern in place, and then trace over the thing while carefully maneuvering around in a manlift 60 feet up in the air.

Of course, what eventually happened was the company turned the whole job over to me, as their paint contractor gave things a second thought and decided to pass. So, I gave them a price of $1,500 to do it if they provided everything, and I expected it to take a day and a half. The half day was for messing with the pattern, the full workday for doing the painting itself.

I was only off on the pattern part, and at first I did not really jump at the chance take on the whole job only because I did not need another looming deadline to meet, and I told them so.

But, in our area they found it extremely hard to find someone to do work like this, and get up and do a professional job of hand painting a large graphic on a building or any other structure. The old guys who well knew how to tackle such projects are mostly dead and gone, and there are no younger people coming up to fill their shoes. I could hardly think of anyone other than myself.

Well, as it turned out, the deadline was quite flexible, and they already intended to provide everything… including the paint. The paint wasn’t the kind of paint I would normally use, but that was still okay with me. And, the job wasn’t hard, just big, and for me it was quite a bit of fun to do this type of project.

In the end, with a paper pattern (provided to me already perforated), a few junky brushes, a small roller, and the nerve to work up high in a very fine manlift, I would make about $100 an hour with only the cold drinks I consumed as direct costs.

I think today, a lot of signmakers would turn down a job like this, but they aren’t that hard. It’s like they say about eating an elephant, you just do it one bite at a time.

The toughest mouthful on this job was the part that should have gone down easily. The unknown person who provided the pattern did a good enough job, but they used extremely heavy duty paper that was quite heavy to tape in place. It was only in two large sections, but I broke it down into a half dozen or more, and that was the right thing to do.

Even so, these pattern sections, about 75 square feet at a time, were a real chore to handle. I was not allowed a helper in the bucket for insurance reasons. I did learn a bit more about working with large patterns from the experience, and I wasn’t a rookie to begin with.

The most important thing is to know the pattern is going to be placed in the correct location on the wall the very first time. This is done by assembling the pattern on the ground, finding the center, and up on the wall working from the center to one end, then from the center to the other end.

It is ideal to have the paper cut in a straight line across the top, and line the top of the pattern up with a straight and level reference line drawn on the building first. The pattern sections are rolled up in a tube shape, and taped across the top edge according to the reference line, then unrolled down the wall with gravity doing the unrolling. This method works and is about the only way to do it.

But, no matter how calm the day, there will be enough wind to aggravate the sign person trying to handle these large paper tigers single-handedly. And in this case the patterns were being taped to a metal building wall, which had been painted black. On the two hot August days in Texas that I did this job, the black wall would become almost too hot to touch. Because of this excessive heat, the glue on the tape that was used to hold these heavy patterns in place would get soft and start to sag and give way. It took a lot of tape to hold these patterns in place, and the right tape was important too.

If I recall correctly now, the tape I used was just a good brand of duct tape, but perhaps the best brand may be Gorilla Tape, which since then I have bought to keep on hand. Someone had written on the pattern to try that brand of tape, but I used the full roll of tape I had in my truck at the time. Regular masking tape? Forget it. I tried a little of it just as a test, but that was a total waste of time.

One very important factor in taping large patterns like this in place, and also preventing them from tearing and self destructing, is to use clear packaging tape to reinforce the edges of the pattern everywhere. The company making the patterns did this for me, but once I cut it into smaller sections, there were edges that were not bordered with packaging tape, and this is where the paper might try to tear, and where it was harder to tape it securely to the wall. Having the clear tape edging makes the pattern much tougher, but also gives a wonderful surface to tape over when placing the pattern on the wall. The duct tape will grab that tape edge better than bare paper, and tears in the pattern are rare (very important).

It took most of a workday to get the several large sections of that large pattern in place, pounce it, and with the patterns removed trace over the lines again to keep a brief summer shower from erasing all the work that had been done. I have drawn more complicated designs than this working from a simple scale drawing, with a 1’ x 1’ graph grid superimposed over the design. On the jobsite the full scale design is hand drawing from point to point, grid square to grid square using a tape measure and large level. I am not sure that method of placing this large simple logo on the wall would not have been faster than messing with the paper giant I jousted with that day.

With the image clearly drawn on the wall, I returned the next morning and was up in that bucket and already painting before the sun popped over the horizon. That was a good thing because of the heat and the need to get the painting completed in only one day. Fortunately, late in the summer I am usually acclimated to the heat, and there was a bit of a breeze all day. So I just kept plugging along even though that hot black wall was no friend of mine.

First I outlined each large letter with an old but decent brush, putting on a couple of coats at least and defining each letter with a paint stroke several inches wide, almost a foot in some places. This does not take years and years of skill, just a marginally steady hand, and a bit of patience. To me, it was just play time as I like being out of the shop and don’t mind fooling around with paint once again.

After that step, a 4” wide “fuzzy” roller, a high-quality one that did not leave much fuzz behind, was the next weapon of choice, and it was not hard to paint two or three coats of paints on everything inside the lines, which was a requirement because of the black surface. The paint was pretty good, a Sherwin-Williams acrylic latex enamel of industrial quality, provided to me in a five gallon bucket, though I used less than two gallons to complete the whole job.

Lastly, I found some of the black paint they had painted the building with, which had a satin finish, and painted over some tape residue from the duct tape, which was easier (much easier) to cover with paint than to remove. Any drips or flaws in my red paint job were touched up at this time as well.

In the end, it really was a fun job, and not a bad paying job since I had so little cost in it, not even the patterns. Some sign pros in this day might turn down a project like this, but there’s no reason to. They’re actually just straight forward sign jobs that often pay pretty well.

And it’s always fun, even years later, to step back and say, “I put that up there,” and know you have left a mark of your work, in your community, in ways few people would ever have a chance to … which suits this old sign maker just fine.