Traditional Signs

15/04/2026

Today (15th April) was the launch of a new display at the Cobb & Co Museum in Toowoomba.
"Made by Hand" features a multitude of crafts, in a static window display of each, plus a video interview of each person demonstrating their trade.

We were invited to provide the Coachpainting aspects, Terry & Brad Drennan the Blacksmithing and Farriery, David Harriman did Coopering, and Kerry Salomon provided the Bridle Making.

There was also tinsmithing, lead lighting and weaving, to go beside Andrew MacDonald 's wheelwright display and the interview with Garth and Sandra Delbridge who sponsored the great display.

09/01/2026

Honour boards... we update a few each year, with lettering hand painted then gilded with 24ct gold leaf.

02/11/2025

Early last May, I spent a day doing some lining & striping on four coach wheels, plus a bit of touch-up work at the Cobb & Co museum in Toowoomba.

They'd made a short clip from that day:

Source: Facebook https://share.google/4gS4ZE8q2a0IW2C5S
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17JC4efBkE/

10/10/2025

We enjoyed demoing lining & lettering an historic horse drawn fire cart/water cart at Barellan.

https://www.facebook.com/share/19u6perF2B/

Signwriter Ian Stewart-Koster, of Queensland, was kept busy working on a rare Nevertire fire cart made by Dangar, Gedye & Co, Sydney. The Nevertire fire fighter cost 38 pounds 15 shillings and was equipped with a 125 gallon tank. The cart was made from spotted gum and the tank had a Myers R288 pump and 20 foot hose. The cart is owned by Clare Gorwyn and Pete Lowry. Ian also completed work on carriages and Furphy tanks during the weekend.

22/08/2025

Here are some brass plaques we've recently made for various customers.
The old steam roller and traction engine ones we make as almost exact copies of originals, in their original letter styles, not modern computer fonts!
They have to look right!

14/08/2025

23/05/2025

I was recently very fortunate to be gifted an old coach painter's notebook from the early part of the 1900s.
I first saw it in about 1988, and thought it may have been lost in the big fires around Gosford in the early 1990s, but it had survived!

It contains hand drawn variations of designs for sulky springs, bolt heads, dashboards, tray sides, boots and seat backs. Some have been pencilled in, while some were sketched with a fountain pen.

It rather resembles some of my old scroll & lining note books!

I'm trying to find more about the original owner/writer- he worked between Wauchope and Newcastle, as fas as I've learned.
There are a few recipes for paint colours, how to do touch ups, and sealing raw timber with plaster of Paris, before sanding, staining and varnishing.

Here are pics of just 8 of its numerous pages!
Enjoy!

It's a great treat to be it's next custodian!

It's only just arrived in the mail today, ( plus 2 other books I'll mention later!)

Thanks heaps, Mike!

11/09/2024

We were recently asked to hand-paint 14 steam train destination boards for Downs Steam at Drayton to use on their C16 train or for special excursions.
(only Clifton is missing - they wanted it early for a special photoshoot this week!)

(Of course, modern computer-aided fonts or typestyles would have just looked so wrong on these old boards, so we went with an old hand-painted looking plain block letter here)

20/05/2024

We enjoyed spending a bit of time last weekend at Lilydale demoing and doing some striping and lettering on a restored corn thresher which was originally built and patented in Toowoomba in 1922. The great grandson of the builder, coordinated the unique project. (This one, No.5, was the 5th one built.)

Kirk also had a complete and fully-operational horse-drawn rabbit poison/bait mixer and layer, as well as a steam engine also made at his great grandfather's Eclipse Ironworks in Toowoomba, so they received a bit of traditional decoration and lettering from us too, while crowds mingled past. :)

See the next 2 posts for 10-15 seconds of video of the harvester running.

It's a wonderful legacy to or of the Cohoe family, for Kirk and his father Les Penfold to have been able to slowly acquire and fix up such unique machines and such significant family history souvenirs at the same time! Full marks to John Reis and Don Gelhaar for their part in the huge and awesome equation.

(& Thanks to Nick G for a couple of the pics!)

Thank you very much for asking us to be a part of the project, too! :)