Custom Signs in Arp, TX

Handmade wooden signs for Arp and the Lake Tyler shoreline — camp names, cabin signs and family pieces, built to live outdoors by the water.

Every place on the lake has a name

Lake Tyler and Lake Tyler East run to nearly five thousand acres just west of Arp, and the shoreline is lined with camps, cabins and family places that have been in the same hands for generations. Almost all of them are called something — and that name goes on a board by the gate, over the porch or on the dock.

It is the most-asked-for sign work we do for this area, and it is a nicer job than most. A camp name is usually chosen by a family and used for fifty years. Getting the lettering, the timber and the proportions right on something like that matters more than it does on a shop sign.

Water is harder on a sign than a pasture is

A sign near the water takes more than one in a field. Constant humidity, spray, sun coming off the surface from below as well as above, and long stretches where nobody is there to notice something has started to lift. Anything mounted on a dock or a boathouse gets the worst of all of it.

So it gets built for that: timber chosen to sit in damp air, joints cut rather than stapled, every face and edge sealed including the back where water actually gets in, hardware that will not bleed rust down the front, and a finish given proper time to cure before it goes anywhere near the lake. Tell us whether it is going on a gate, a porch or a dock, because those are three different builds.

Made in a furniture shop

These are timber pieces, not printing. Real frames, real boards, joints cut rather than stapled, and a finish put on the way a table gets finished. That is why they survive a summer on the water, and why one looks right on a porch beside good furniture.

Hooks, and the thing every lake house needs

A rack of hooks by the door of a lake place earns its keep faster than anything else in the building. Wet towels, life jackets, hats, dog leads — all of it otherwise ends up on a chair. A stained board with cast hooks, cut to the length of wall you have and sealed for damp, fixes that. Add the camp name across the top and it is a sign and a rack at once.

In town

Away from the water, Arp is a small farming town of under a thousand people that started life as a railroad stop called Jarvis Switch and had a post office named Strawberry before it was renamed after a newspaper editor. The sign work there is the ordinary kind and just as welcome: family names, established dates, house numbers, church signs and noticeboards, scripture, and school and team pieces for the Tigers.

Ordering

Send the wording, the rough size, and a photograph of where it is going. Say if it is anywhere near the water, because that changes the build rather than just the paint. You get a price before anything is cut, and there is no extra charge for being out of town.

Questions we get from Arp