Remembering the Ryder Cup at the K-Club

With the Ryder Cup starting in France this week, it reminded me of the time that we had the contract with The K-Club to manufacture feature signage for the hotel for the event, and I would like to share that with you now.

2006 was a really exciting time, Barrow Signs was a relatively new company and we had just got the news that we were to fit a 6ft square exact replica of the Ryder Cup sign at the Clubhouse, between the players entrance and the clubhouse balcony.  We were not given any detailed drawing, only a copy of the logo and a deadline!

Firstly we had to deconstruct the logo into all of its separate elements and group them into colours. Once we had this, the next job was to figure out the layers in which they were to be fitted.

For this project we used a mixture of aluminium gauges, all of the major components were CNC cut from 8mm thick plate and 3mm was used for the smaller details.  All of the parts were powder coated to the BS colours.

Above are some of the parts of the sign after powder coating and ready for assembly. In total there were approx 250 separate parts required to make up this one sign.

The main elements of the sign were drilled and tapped and fitted with threaded bar, when it came to installation we used clear polyethene spacers to ensure that the layers of the sign were correct.

This photo was taken immediately on completion of the project. During the event and this formed the backdrop for many TV interviews that were shown worldwide.

The sign was fitted about ten days in advance of the start of the tournament, and I can clearly remember on the day of fitting it there was a lot of excitement. It turned out that many of the European players were having a practice day, and that afternoon congregated at the 18th.

Here are some of the European Team having a practice round, you can see the stands still under construction in the background.  I clearly remember joking with Ian Woosenham and Darren Clarke about weather or not we would be finished on time!

Finally, below is a photo of our sign that was taken in July that I found on Twitter.  Our sign project still looks as good as the day that it was installed and you will notice at how the landscaping has developed to frame the sign.

As an owner/ manager of a small business I can recall almost every project undertaken, however, this one is very special. 

DM

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