Just completed a first-of-its-kind glass etching project

[OnSiteGlassEtching]

We just finished creating a first-of-its-kind yahrzeit wall for the new Congregation Beth Sholom synagogue in San Francisco.

It was a tremendous amount of work, with a lot of very precise detail, but in the end it became a breathtaking display.

The yahrzeit wall ("yahrzeit" actually means "time of one year") honors members of the synagogue who have passed away. We created a 10-foot-tall, 20-foot-long wall of glass panels listing names of the deceased members. LED lights automatically glow on the anniversary of their deaths.

The wall can showcase up to 2,400 names. It displays their name and the date they died first in English, then in Hebrew. On the anniversary of their death, an LED light projects through the glass to create a haloed dot beneath their name.

All the names were digitally imaged into the frosted background of the glass. More than 2,000 tiny holes drilled through the aluminum back panels for the lights had to match perfectly with the graphics on the glass panels. Quarter-inch aluminum plate panels support the structure and provide mounting for the glass panels.

We've completed precise, difficult work before. World of Coca-Cola Museum, Arlington Memorial Cemetery, etc. The yahzreit wall proved challenging just the same.

Holes in the glass are not forgiving. If you mess up, you can't just ream them out. We had to be very, very precise.

It was quite an engineering feat to get through this project. We were creating and setting precedents all the way through the three-day installation of the glass and LED panels. We had a specialist fly in from Canada for the electronics, and we worked about an average of 12 hours a day.

We finished the metal LED panels with custom color-matched polyurethane paint in order to preserve their longevity and durability. We also dimmed the LED lights slightly so that the display would not be too overwhelming, which also increased the lifespan of the LEDs. The lights should last somewhere between 50 and 100 years before needing to be replaced.

The synagogue was thrilled with its new addition, and the response from the congregation has been overwhelmingly positive.

As promised, we finished the project on time and within budget.

We might have had a few more costs on our end than we expected, but nobody knew about it but us. We take great pride in bringing things in on time and we always honor our pricing.