McCoy's Shell Service

You may recall that Steve Meadows and I collaborated on a 48"x48" carved Shell sign earlier this year. That big yellow Shell is still hanging in the shop and will eventually be moved outside when I get my sign pole done.

Well, we had so much fun doing the first one, we decided we should do a second one. As we did with the first sign, I did the pattern for the design, Ronnie Hawkins provided the 2" thick poplar, and Steve Meadows did the amazing work of the carving and painting the sign.

You will notice that this Shell is a bit different....its RED! This sign was patterned off of an original Super-Shell pump plate. A pump plate is a 12"x12" porcelain sign that would have been bolted/riveted to the door of a gas pump. You can actually see signs like this on the Shell gas pumps in our 1947 photo below. Even though the original signs were only 12"x12", doing a huge one (48"x48") sounded more fun, so we made a big one. Super-Shell was a grade of gasoline that you would once buy at our Shell station. I have always liked the original design and thought it would look good on a carved Shell.

This sign was finished this week and is currently hanging in the station. It will most likely stay inside the shop for most of its life. But I might put it outside on the sign pole for special events once I get the sign pole built and installed.

Thanks again to Ron for the lumber! And thanks again to Steve for crafting such an amazing piece for the station. Please enjoy the carving video that we captured. Its pretty cool to watch Steve make the sign come to life! Thanks for reading.