metal letter help needed

[Marlene]

to make a long story short, I have 2" upper/ower case .5" thick aluminum letters that I am mounting to aluminum pan faces that have been spray painted. I used an install pattern with flush studs, nuts from behind to mount these. the problem is the the size of the letters, the pattern and the depth of the thread for the studs made this one big mess and I need to re-do it and glue these to the face. I don't want to use double back tape as they need to be flush to the face. the clear VHB tape without the foam still puts them up some and it hard to work with the letter strokes. is there a glue that would work for this? the sign is an exterior sign. thanks

 

[Mainframe]

I would use clear 100% Silicone, it will hold very well, if you are worried, get some GE Silicone II , it will hold even better, put it on in round blobs, not long strings, after 20 minutes it will hold the letter still, after 2 days, good luck getting them off.

 

[Billct2]

What happened with the stud mounting? I would think that is the best way to get the look you want. Trying to use silicone could get real messy with letters that small.

 

[Marlene]

what happen with the stud mounting was the pattern had an "x" target printed with a hole half punched into it, not thru the center of the x. it was off in that it looked like they punched it with the stud in the letter and it skipped so that there wasn't an exact hole, it was more like a drag mark of a stud. the letters are small, only 2" caps and the depth is .5". when they drilled the treads into the backs of the letters for the studs they aren't stright in but have angles. that puts the studs off and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get the studs to be straight. I didn't use all the studs so I would have some ability to turn the letters to get them as straight as possible but it didn't work as the baseline line is off as well as the letters being straight. I could only widen the hole in the aluminum pan so much because the stroke of the letter is small and you could see the hole if I made them wide enough to shift the letter to make it straight. I made my own stencil pattern and trying to glue these down and forget the studs. I just did a line of copy with the silicone dots and what my idea is to do the letters like that and once they are stuck down, flip the pan over and squirt some more silicone into the holes in the pan where the studs were to go to put some more from behind.

 

[Gino]

Well, what kinda paint was sprayed on the aluminum ?? Your concern won't be what glue for metal to metal, but metal to paint...........

Inside or outside ??

 

[J Hill Designs]

open up the holes a tad and use washers behind

edit: i need to learn to read a whole paragraph.

 

[SignosaurusRex]

open up the holes a tad and use washers behind

edit: i need to learn to read a whole paragraph.

+1

 

[Billct2]

If you want to make sure they stay, after they set up you could run a small screw into them from the back (predrill of course).

 

[signage]

Do you have a picture of the mess up might be able to come up with something if I saw it.

 

[Moze]

I'd use the studs you can (even if it's one per letter (or none per letter)) and use VHB 4905. The stuff is super thin and barely notceable.

 

[Marlene]

Do you have a picture of the mess up might be able to come up with something if I saw it.

I've taken off all the letters so I don't have a photo. the letters are small, so the strokes are, in places only slightly larger than the hole for the stud. when they drilled the holes the holes aren't done straight but at crazy angles and there is no fixing that. when I put the studs in the back they aren't straight but go all different directions. even using just one stud didn't work as they did such a bad job making the pattern that if is off even a little it shows. (letters and pattern made by you-know-who, big company that makes letters). on a larger letter, I could have widen the holes and adjusted the letters but because the strokes are so small, there is no room to widen. what I've done is to make a stencil pattern from vinyl and am sticking them done with the silicone which is working so far. we've installed stud mounts and used silicone but I wasn't sure if it would work all on it's own as I like having the studs to make sure things stay where I put them. the pattern was so off that no stud is usable as I thought I might get lucky, but no. I had baseline issues with "o's" raised above the baseline instead of descending, letters that tilted to the right and to the left, nothing straight. it looked like a blind two year old had done the work and it was done by our best installer. I hate days like this...

 

[J Hill Designs]

If you want to make sure they stay, after they set up you could run a small screw into them from the back (predrill of course).

I would do this once the silicone sets up...drill, tap, drop a machine screw in (1 or 2 per letter will suffice, just for piece of mind

 

[signage]

Are the holes in the back of the letters in the correct place as on the pattern?

If so why don't you remove the studs and use a screw to hold to aluminum? Might even beable to straighten holes out by redrilling and using form-a-thread by loctite!