You Only Turn 21 Once -- A Plaque for our Birthday Daughter

Caitlyn or as she prefers using her adult name Cait turns 21 today. I thought a nice plaque in honor of this major life milestone would be appreciated and have been working on just that for a while. In the time-honored tradition of "Just in Time" manufacturing I just finished up the night before. 

I have made a few plaques over the times but mostly they have been either carving cute sugar glider plaques to help my wife's business or fun experiments. I did want this one to be special. I played around in Aspire trying to come up with a concept. Cait has always had a special feeling for Wolfs. When she first started Colledge she wanted to become a Wild Life Veterinarian and treat wild animals including wolfs. Aspire has a 3D model of a howling wolf that fits the bill nicely. I chose to carve on one of my last pieces of Hard Maple I had on hand. Side note now that things are starting to calm down I will need to make a run down to my favorite hardwood store and do a little stocking up. 

I wanted to try something new with the wolf carving. my thinking it should be grey and given my poor artistic skills, it would need to be spray painted to look good. The engraved lettering would look good in grey as well. So my plan was to stick down some Oracal 631 self-adhesive masking film I was able to order from Michels. I would carve out the circle dish exposing the wolf for spray paint while protecting the surface of the plaque. I would also carve the letters through the mask. After carving I would be able to spray the paint surfaces peel off the mask and it would look Magnifique. 

Well to quote Robert Burns 'The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.' The longer I create on the CNC the more ways of things going wrong I discover. The wolf carving worked very well with a nice exposed circle. But the lettering was a right mess. The font size overwhelmed the Oracal 631 mask and peeled off on some of the finer details. Oracal says the 631 is a lighter adhesion film as compared to the 751 film used by sign makers which has a much stronger glue. Possibly the 751 might have worked better but it not what I had so onto plan B.

Luckily a simple fix was to use the technique I had recently learned how to color fill the VCarve lettering with acrylic paint under a coating of shellac. I put up a quick tip about the technique a short while back. All I have to do was to use a couple of blue painters tape strips over the lettering and it was safe to spay the wolf carving. After I peeled back the film and filled in the Vcarve lettering with some Acrylic paint. 

For the final touch, I put a chamfered edges on the plaque with my router table using a 45-degree chamfer bit. I painted that edge grey as well to set it off. A little fine sanding and a few final finishing coats of shellack and I do believe to quote myself it came out looking Magnifique. 

 

Not sure if I ever made a stand for my previous plaques but for sure I wanted one this time. After a quick

online search die plaque stands I was finding the typical design that clips around on the front holding it

securely. I thought if you had lettering near those clips it would be obscured. So yeah in my nature I designed my own. I used a piece of Oak board I picked up a Home Depot. Did I mention I hate carving in Oak on my current machine? Oak is a tough wood and I have to go very slow as to not overtax my machine. The idea of the stand is I cut a data pocket to slip in a riser. A deep Vcarved groove is near the font to hold the edge of the plaque and it leans up against the riser at about a 45-degree angle. Gravity does it work and so far it seems to be holding the plaque nicely and it has a clean look to it.

So a completed project. If I need a plaque stand in the future I have one and it can be scaled to need. I may decide to offer it for sale as well. As far as mistakes made well its all part of the learning curve to improve on in the future. I think I remember a slogan Rockler Woodworking published 'Woodworking is 10% planning, 40% cutting and 50% trying to figure out how to fix your mistakes.'