ABOUT
Founded 1961
D. PENUEL
Owner
Over 50 years of experience,
Penuel Signs is located in Georgetown Delaware. Penuel Sign Company was founded in 1961 by Donald "Don" T. Penuel.
Penuel Sign Company is still based in Georgetown, Delaware & continues to serve Sussex County and surrounding areas with D. Penuel carrying on his fathers talents into it's 59th Year as of 2020.
Penuel Sign Company has expended and grown with new technology incorporated in its sign making methods.
Blessed with the artistic talents of his father, "Don" Penuel and uses these talents along with today's technology available to provide his clients with state of the art signs and creative design skills with Logo Design and effective signs that do the Job required by the customer.
Penuel Signs is located in Georgetown Delaware. Penuel Sign Company was founded in 1961 by Donald "Don" T. Penuel.
Penuel Sign Company is still based in Georgetown, Delaware & continues to serve Sussex County and surrounding areas with D. Penuel carrying on his fathers talents into it's 59th Year as of 2020.
Penuel Sign Company has expended and grown with new technology incorporated in its sign making methods.
Blessed with the artistic talents of his father, "Don" Penuel and uses these talents along with today's technology available to provide his clients with state of the art signs and creative design skills with Logo Design and effective signs that do the Job required by the customer.
We are constantly looking for innovations in signage and have attended the US Sign Expo on a number of occasions to seek out new suppliers and products.
We have a comprehensive range of equipment for sign making including vinyl cutters, digital printer, engravers, CNC router.
We pride ourselves in being small enough to care and large enough to cope with any job, from a single door plaque to a large commercial sign.
We have a comprehensive range of equipment for sign making including vinyl cutters, digital printer, engravers, CNC router.
We pride ourselves in being small enough to care and large enough to cope with any job, from a single door plaque to a large commercial sign.
D. Penuel
Penuel Signs Founder
Donald "Don" Penuel
Evening Journal Article Oct. 12, 1975 Article By Nancy E. Lynch Georgetown DE
Don Penuel picked up a hobby at work.
Penuel painted road signs for the highway division until 1964 when the work was consolidated throughout the state and done by machine in Dover. By then, though, Penuel had learned the basics of the trade and had been doing painting as a hobby for 6 years.
Stock cars are his specialty and he estimated he ’s painted probably 200 since his first in 1958. Truck lettering has also been a large part of his business as well as countless signs. Each piece of work receives his precise free-hand embellishments that, for the stock cars often include cartoon characters.
Penuel, who still works for the highway division, estimates he spends 15-18 hours a week behind his sable paint brushes, and all of that at night and on Saturdays. The balance of the weekends he reserves for a grandstand seat at local stock car races.
“Someone asked me once if it didn’t bother me seeing all my work get torn up at the races. It doesn’t really because I know they’ll be back for more painting,” Penuel says casually.
His workshop is a 15-foot high garage he built in 1970 for his truck lettering. The structure, with its adjoining supply room, sits behind his tidy white ranch house on Del. 18 west of Georgetown.
Although Penuel says his business is seasonal, he notes that it is steady throughout the year except when he shuts down for a few weeks of vacation each summer.
He also says any job, big or small, is easy if he can picture it in his mind first. That ’s especially true, he adds, for the custom work he does on the stock cars. “If I’ve got that idea and can picture it before I start, then I’ve got it made.” And not surprisingly, Penuel spends a lot of time just advising his customers. “You have to fit the style of lettering with the occasion it’s needed for,” he says.
Once the big decisions have been made, Penuel roughs out the work in charcoal, then fills in with enamel paint. He uses a variety of brushes or quills of red sable or hoghair. “You’ll spend $50 for brushes before you know it. Paints are expensive too, but you’ve got to realize you can paint 30 trucks from a pint can and still have some left over. “Lettering doesn’t use much paint,” Penuel says.
For special effects, he offers both aluminum paint and gold leaf. “When you get into the gold leaf it’s going to be expensive,” he warns, adding that his rates vary, depending on the job.
Penuel is proud of his work, of the self-taught trade he ’s nurtured over the years. And he has every reason to be. A bout with polio when he was 15 left him forever dependent on crutches. But he refuses to let it become and issue. “I look around and see people lots worse off than me I’ve got a wonderful wife, Barbara who’s an LPN (licensed practical nurse) and two fine boys, John who’s 15 and Mike, 12, and I’m doing what I want to do.”
He ’s been a spare-time sign and stock car painter for nearly 20 years and credits his job with the state division of highways for getting him started.
“I went with the highway in ’56,” explains Penuel, a Georgetown native. “Russell Bradley up in Lincoln worked with the highway and said they needed a sign painter, so I got some books and studied lettering and got real interested in it.”Penuel painted road signs for the highway division until 1964 when the work was consolidated throughout the state and done by machine in Dover. By then, though, Penuel had learned the basics of the trade and had been doing painting as a hobby for 6 years.
Stock cars are his specialty and he estimated he ’s painted probably 200 since his first in 1958. Truck lettering has also been a large part of his business as well as countless signs. Each piece of work receives his precise free-hand embellishments that, for the stock cars often include cartoon characters.
Penuel, who still works for the highway division, estimates he spends 15-18 hours a week behind his sable paint brushes, and all of that at night and on Saturdays. The balance of the weekends he reserves for a grandstand seat at local stock car races.
“Someone asked me once if it didn’t bother me seeing all my work get torn up at the races. It doesn’t really because I know they’ll be back for more painting,” Penuel says casually.
His workshop is a 15-foot high garage he built in 1970 for his truck lettering. The structure, with its adjoining supply room, sits behind his tidy white ranch house on Del. 18 west of Georgetown.
Although Penuel says his business is seasonal, he notes that it is steady throughout the year except when he shuts down for a few weeks of vacation each summer.
He also says any job, big or small, is easy if he can picture it in his mind first. That ’s especially true, he adds, for the custom work he does on the stock cars. “If I’ve got that idea and can picture it before I start, then I’ve got it made.” And not surprisingly, Penuel spends a lot of time just advising his customers. “You have to fit the style of lettering with the occasion it’s needed for,” he says.
Once the big decisions have been made, Penuel roughs out the work in charcoal, then fills in with enamel paint. He uses a variety of brushes or quills of red sable or hoghair. “You’ll spend $50 for brushes before you know it. Paints are expensive too, but you’ve got to realize you can paint 30 trucks from a pint can and still have some left over. “Lettering doesn’t use much paint,” Penuel says.
For special effects, he offers both aluminum paint and gold leaf. “When you get into the gold leaf it’s going to be expensive,” he warns, adding that his rates vary, depending on the job.
Penuel is proud of his work, of the self-taught trade he ’s nurtured over the years. And he has every reason to be. A bout with polio when he was 15 left him forever dependent on crutches. But he refuses to let it become and issue. “I look around and see people lots worse off than me I’ve got a wonderful wife, Barbara who’s an LPN (licensed practical nurse) and two fine boys, John who’s 15 and Mike, 12, and I’m doing what I want to do.”
PENUEL SIGNS
22832 E. Trap Pond Road
Georgetown, DE
Georgetown, DE
302-856-7265
dpenuel@comcast.net
OPENING HOURS
- Mon - Fri
- -
- Saturday
- Appointment Only
- Sunday
- Closed