Pulling my hair out on this one.

I am trying to make a horseshoe magnet by lofting two text splines—n and s.  So in the end when you look at the magnet from a perspective view one end will be N for north wheras the opposite will be an S. 

Problem is the s or the n will come out backwards, depending upon which I choose first.  Tried every which way but alwasy one of the letters is inverted.  Thought I could use the twist deformation graphs in the bottom.  Messes it up worst.

How would one go about pulling off the above?

Create your 2 text splines in the Top VP. Create your horseshoe path upside down below the letters - only because it’s easier to see what is happening.
One end of the path will have a yellow vertex - that’s the first one i.e. 0% along the spline.

Lofts work along the local Z. Select the Move tool and Local coordinate system - both letters will have their local Z going upwards which is why you always get one of them inverted. Pick the letter next to the first vertex of the Path, use the Rotate Tool to rotate the object 180 degrees (use Angle Snaps) side to side (as opposed to top-to-bottom). Command Panel > Utilities > Reset XForm. Rotate it back the right way around. Now it’s Z is pointing down along the path. Apply the loft to the path and use the Get Shape to get the letter you rotated first, then the other one at 100 percent along the path.

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

Thanks.

That was it.  Alleviated much stress.  I wasn’t aware/had never used that reset form utility.