As a proud resident of Dogpatch, I wanted to create a replica of the sign outside of Union Iron Works, the iron shop that truly built and transformed this neighborhood at the dawn of the 20th century.
This is the Union Iron Works sign I was trying to replicate. It’s currently housed in the SF Maritime National Park Visitor Center, and to get a better view past the propeller blade I took a few photos. From this I Photoshopped the images together, then traced the outline in Illustrator.
I bought three steel sheets, and applied a rusting solution to them using this Instructable.
Once rusted, I covered all the sheets in blue tape, and laser cut out the letters shapes from the Illustrator file.
I removed all tape around the desired letters and shapes, and then spray painted the sign with a textured black color.
Peel off the blue letters after painting, and there you have it!
Bonus: footage of a boat launch in 1898, shot for Thomas Edison’s film company.