Jeff’s Bedford Falls Sign

My friend Ken is an big fan of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life so we recreated the sign “YOU ARE NOW IN BEDFORD FALLS” for a Christmas decoration.

First I pulled the image from the movie into Sketch up and did a match to try to get the size. Ken estimated that the top of the sign was 6′ high so I used that and calculated everything else with Sketch up. Ken found a font that was close but we had to stretch it in Photoshop to make it long enough. He then printed it out and cut out each letter to make a stencil. The sign ended up 8′ wide by 7′ high.

We had to glue up a block for the curved moldings and rough cut them on the band saw. We made a template of the curve the width of the molding and used a flush cut bit on the router table to clean it up.

The legs are 4×4 pine but they were very warped so by the time I joined and planned them they were just over 3 x3. The posts are connected to the feet via mortise and tenon joints. I added blocks to the ends of the feet so that it would stand better on uneven ground (and I thought they looked cool.) To fasten it to the ground we drilled hole through the feet at a slight angle and made stakes from 18″ galvanized rod to stake it to the ground.