wow I love the interstate and state route signs! I'd like to get some of those but they're hard to find laying on the side of the road (and expensive in thrift stores). I'm not going to stop on the side of a busy interstate to grab a sign that's been hit by a drunk the night before. I do that with signs in rural areas though. Most of the time they won't re-install the old sign again anyway so it will get scrapped since it's more work taking the old sign off the busted pole and putting it on a new pole. I find more signs on the ground in the winter though (plow trucks pack the snow against them and the poles just fall over since they don't bury the poles deep enough in the ground). Stop signs are especially victim to plows since plows tend to bank the store at the corners of intersections, where stop signs are located. Basically, the sign poles will lean away from the street corner at a 45 degree angle and after a few winters will lean enough to fall over.

My friend/roomate has a lot of those signs, he gets them on ebay and his newest addition is a Wisconsin one, which is a piece of plywood with the reflective sticker on it. The hallway has lots of different states, and there is a couple more in his room. I only have the two signs that I already have pictured earlier, and I hope to get some more too at some point.

You know, you could do something with those Speed Limit 35 stickers that I saw at your place, maybe you can do the plywood thing like Wisconsin does (that's just how they do things) and make it like a real sign or something like that. xD

I thought of doing that. My friend said I should roll them up and sell them on ebay but since they were given to me by RIDOT when I was eight years old I don't want to part with them. I'd like to get some sheet aluminum and stick them on that since plywood eventually rots but I've thought about the plywood idea too. I have the two Speed Limit 35s and one Do Not enter. For "real" traffic signs I have a lot. Three stop signs (2 30" and one 24"), one 24" Do Not enter, several No Parking/Handicapped Parking signs, a vintage steel "ONE WAY - DO NOT ENTER" sign, and a few other miscellaneous signs.

Oh I see, what you would have to do, and I am sure Wisconsin does this too if they are going to use plywood for their actual signs, is spray some protectant over it, or whatever makes the wood not rot nor get wet, then let it dry for a while then you stick the sticker on it, and then you got a wisconsin style sign right there, even though the stickers themselves are Rhode Island.

Do you have any highway shields? My friend specifically collects those, and would want a couple others but specifically collects state shields or US highway or interstate ones. I could get some more myself but I am not made of much money at the moment. I have a couple signs I would want but those would be very hard to find since they are specific. Heh.

Nope I don't have any interstate or state route signs. Would like to get some RI route signs and local interstate signs (like 95, 195, or 295) but they're hard to find on the ground since a lot of people like those signs, so the second one falls over someone snatches it up. Or in the case of freeway route markers, the highway patrol cleans them up when an accident happens.

I've never bought any of my signs. They've either been given to me or I've picked them off the side of the road due to a knockdown. A lot of times the signs get all scratched and destroyed if the pole gets hit but sometimes I get lucky and the sign manages to not get damaged badly when it falls. One of those cases was a stop sign that was installed on an existing pole (to replaced a faded non-reflective sign) and a month later the sign fell because the snow plows packed the snow against it. The sign sat under the snow pile all winter and they actually installed a new stop sign and must not have seen the existing one under the snow since they left it. I lived right around the corner too so I grabbed my dad's truck and tossed the pole in the bed and took it back to my house. I mean, they had already installed the replacement so it was a no brainer. Plus the stop sign was brand-new. Literally used for a month!

Now, do any of the signs you or your friend own have "AHS" on them? Most of my signs have "AHS" on the bottom. I assume a brand name but I can't find any info on them when I look them up. And they must be a current company since that brand new stop sign I was talking about was AHS. All my signs are local so maybe it's a small RI sign shop that doesn't advertise or something. Most signs here say AHS or are unbranded. RIDOT uses a lot of 3M signs, which are what those sign sheets I have are. RIDOT buys the sign faces and applies them to their own sheet metal blanks in most cases. The only wood signs they use here are for construction signs.

Nice signs, I have a bunch of signs too, I mostly get them from thrift and antique places with a couple of signs I couldn't get locally from eBay. I have a MAX 45 MPH, a MAX 80 km/h, a 60km advisory speed, a couple of signal ahead signs, a few stop signs, a keep to right of island sign, some NO PARKING signs and a NO EXIT sign.

As for highway shields, I have signs for ON 6, 7, 9, 11, 27, 101, 401, 403. I also have a I-5 sign I bought off eBay. I also have EAST and WEST directional tabs for the ON shields.

Haven't seen AHS on any of my signs though. The ON highway shields are all made in house by the MTO so there's no manufacturer's markings on them. The modern MTO shields are made from adhesive vinyl on engineer grade sheeting. The older shields appear to have been hand stenciled. Yeah the two main makers of reflective sheeting are 3M and Avery Dennision so unless AHS was Avery Dennison's old name I'm not sure what it stands for. The MTO uses a lot of plywood signs, some of the larger warning signs, and ground mounted guide signs are all made using plywood on 6x6 cedar posts. The wood signs usually have a rough texture to them and have grey painted backs. The smaller signs use 4x4 cedar posts. They use metal posts for the larger freeway signs or the smaller signs which are always aluminum or galvanized steel.

RIDOT used to use wood posts for signs. Either 4x4s or 4x6s, with the sign attaching to the 4" side. They did away with the wooden posts, I think because they do not meet FHWA breakway requirements. So the past 15 years at least they've been using mainly galvanized U-Channel posts but I've also seen RIDOT use square galvanized posts. Most city/municipal owned signs are on green enameled U-channel posts but I've seen wooden municipal posts as well and I've seen some municipalities use galvanized U-channel posts too. A lot of places in Massachusetts has used round yellow sign posts but most posts in southeastern MA are square galvanized now.

Ahh, the MTO drills two 1" holes near the base of each wood post perpendicular to the direction of traffic to act as a breakway point. I'm not sure when they started doing that but most wood posts have the holes. They also use galvanized U-channel posts in some cases.

Municipal signs are a mixed bag, galvanized U-channel seems to be the most common, but they also use galvanized square tube and wood 4x4/6x6 posts. I've only seen round tube used for things liks bus stop signs here.

Interesting concept for making the wood poles "breakaway". I'm not sure if RIDOT has done that to any of their wooden freeway sign poles.

With the U-channel poles what side do they install the signs on the posts up there? The proper way to do it is to mount the side to the "bigger" side of the pole, which RIDOT has always done, but many cites and towns here install the signs on the "smaller" side. Not sure if it's out of ignorance (those guys are not the smartest lol) or if they do it purposely so you can't remove the sign without a deep socket (which is easy enough to get but it's probably enough to deter teens from stealing the signs unless their dad is a mechanic or something and has deep sockets. I have a deep 1/2" and deep 9/16" for my street lights like the Westy lights with the threaded rods and nuts. The 1/2" happens to be the size most traffic signs use too... Some traffic signs are installed with bolts that take 7/16" nuts though most are 1/2".

I've seen wood poles with holes drilled like what joe_347V said.

Yeah, I think before they started using premade impact attenuators at the ends of the guardrails, the MTO used to do the same thing for the first few wood guardrail posts. Anyway, I've only ever seen the sign mounted on the bigger side of the pole here. Heh, I have a set of deep sockets too although I don't really use them that often lol.