Tiki Phil's Polynesian Village light and sign

A few years back I purchased a light from the parking lot of Walt Disney World's Polynesian Village. I bought it from http://www.mousesurplus.com. Disney updated the Polynesian and put in all new lights, so mousesurplus sold the old ones. These are the pictures from mousesurplus:

And here's an old photo I found showing one of the lights in the parking lot:

I had to rewire it. It had very old wiring, some transformers and a bizare lightbulb in it that I never saw before. I made a pole for it out of four treated 2x4s. Here's a picture of it in my back yard:

I really like the sign on the lightpole that you can see in the parking lot picture above. The one above has an L on it. The lights all have letters on them to help you remember where you parked. I wanted my sign to have more then just a letter on it. I used this picture for inspiration:

Using this picture I created this sketch that I then took to Kinkos to have printed on large paper. I changed the wording to Tiki Phil's which is what everyone calls my back yard.

I traced it onto some wood I bought at Home Depot and cut it out:

Five months of carving in my freetime and I had this:

I painted it and attached it to my light. Here's the finished project:

[ Edited by: TikiPhil 2007-06-30 09:44 ]

That's just fantastic, Phil. Well done.

Good Job!
5 months of carving...Wow!
Now that's an item you can be proud of!

That's some nice carving and a great idea! You could go into business refurbishing old signs and posts... just have to speed up the process a bit. :wink:

Really though, you should be proud of what you did, and the extra time shows in the end result!

Wow....very kewl. When are you installing the rides? I got E tickets. ")

Superb!!

That rehab of the light with your "new" sign is great.

Every once in a while something really great pops up on Tiki Central and reminds me why I like this stuff so much. Your lamp post and sign fall into that category. Excellent job, Thank you.

five months!! you could have had pariarts paul laser cut that for you in 5 minutes!!

Very nice! Congrats!

Thanks everyone for all the compliments. Yes, I am very proud of it. I have never carved before and I only worked on it in my free time, an hour or so at a time, that is why it took so long.

Yea I know I could have had Pariarts, or somone else, laser cut it for me. Or I could have used a router. But I wanted the satisfaction of doing it by hand, by myself. Also, the original Polynesian Village signs were all made by Oceanic Arts http://www.tikicentral.com/oa/oa23.htm in the late 60s and I doubt they used a laser cutter :)

FANTASTIC work Phil. Looks exceptional.

I love it! It looks incredible! Great nostalgic piece! Great job!