“…there is no such thing as bad weather, every sky has it’s beauty…”

So wrote George Gissing and of course it’s quite true; when we take time to appreciate the sky above it’s is a wonderful thing!

Gissing led a chequered life but was surely one of the best writers of the Victorian era, almost Hardy-like in his social assessment of the times. As a son of Wakefield, when the Local Authority undertook enhancement works in the town centre it was considered appropriate that a tribute should be made to the great writer.

Hence, we were commisioned by Wakefield Metropolitan District Council to produce Solid Stainless Steel lettering and text and to install them flush into the new granite paving units. Inlaid Lettering and signage is a speciality of UrbanFinish and we install flush with a permanent anti-slip finish. On this public realm scheme we also manufactured and retro-fitted Skate-Stop anti-skate devices with hidden anchors and a matching Stainless Steel tamperproof finish and fitted metal blister tactile studs in Yorkstone Paving.

Starting with the Wakefield MDC designer’s layout…

… we transcribed this into recesses machined into the blank granite paving we received from the Client.  Now we turned to cutting, shaping and finishing the Stainless Steel inserts to the paving and made them to the designer’s drawing exactly.

Bit by bit we were able to route-out and then inlay the Solid Stainless Steel feature inlaid lettering pieces into the granite to acheive a precise replication of the Client’s requirements as drawn in the dwg file.

Specifiers should note that inlaying specialist metal features into stone is a time-consuming process and we do occasionally over-shoot the completion time given at the outset [as in this scheme, some stones take longer than expected to work on]. Despite this, here in Wakefield, the design drawn was flush-inlaid into the granite using anti-slip stainless steel with hidden anchors and the end result was appreciated by all.