My use of sandblasted lettering

Rubber stencil with letter S, stencil is discoloured from the force of blasting abrasive through it. There is a match at the top of the S

1.11.23

The following works were made with Fyfe Glenrock, Oldmeldrum

Woodland View, Irvine

Close up of milestone style sculpture with the lettering The Night was Still on it — S cut from a rubber stencil stuck to a tile of granite (rubber discoloured from the blast), a completed work sited at Ayrshire Central Hospital

In this example the stencil was cut by machine from a computer programme.

This is a serifed font known as Didot. There was much debate about its suitability, I learned that you should have cuts in stencils that are at least 3mm wide, to make the letters clearly visible. This series of milestone style sculptures have texts on them drawn from Burns’s poetry. I wanted the lettering to look like it was from an old book, not a headstone.

Sheet rubber stencils protected the background to the lettering on the Ailsa Craig granite, whilst lettering was sandblasted into it.

To sandblast an abrasive powder is forced by compressed air through a rubber tube to a ceramic nozzle. The fine and even stream is then aimed in a very controlled manner over the detail cut out of the stencil.

The rubber stencil gets a burnt appearance around where the sandblasting has taken place, an uneven tone of discolouration indicates where more blast is required.

Lancastria Memorial, Golden Jubilee National Hospital

Bronze sculpture made from sheets which represent the shape of the vessels hull, it has a V-shaped cut in the back. It sits on top of a large block of black granite. It is a memorial and reads - We will remember them, erected by the Lancastria Association of Scotland, on the site of the Beardmore shipyard, where the vessel was designed and built in 1920.

This inscription is in Gill Sans. The same technique as above on honed black granite – simple and legible.

Trails + Tales, Twechar

Big block of whinstone with hand cut rubber stencil on it with lettering Vtere Felix Vivas. The block has 2 holes drilled in the bottom for fixing which can be seen because the block is sitting on its side.

Whinstone block sitting the right way up with the lettering Vtere Felix Vivas standing proud with the background sandblasted away.

This is a hand cut stencil to realise raised lettering on whinstone. Instead of the stencil masking the background it’s the lettering that’s masked and the background that is blasted away.

I designed the lettering from an antiquated (but useful) book, that I inherited from the RSA Library when it was being rationalised. My design was also influenced by some splendid lettering that I saw on a wall at Glasgow University whilst undertaking research at the Hunterian.