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SWMBO is as avid a knitter, seamstress, and needle artist as I am a woodwrecker, so I thought I would take the opportunity to dress up her little shop too. I was already in the process of designing her a logo, she has aspirations of changing careers and entering small business, so I thought I would practice my carving a little (note that we have not done the name search so the business name may change).
The stock I am using is the 1" Honduras mahogany slab I glued up in 1996 that nearly removed my left thumb, so you could say I am getting a little revenge. Here is the wood from the back, showing the tablesaw scar. I first made a paper template, then attached it to my blank. I used a Dremel to hog out the worst of the waste and began carving it in relief. Here is the sign with the majority of the wood removed You can see that most of the words "Claudia's Shop" have the relief carving complete while the logo is still untouched.
Once the relief work was done on all of the design, I sanded with 120 grit Alox paper to remove any traces of the paper stencil and the glue used to apply it. I used an electric pad sander but had to be careful not to touch the carved bits. The next steps involved spraying flat black paint obliquely to the piece to lightly coat the relief work and the sides of the raised lettering to give them a deeper look. Then 120 grit sandpaper was used to lightly scuff the paint off of the tooling marks on the relief carving to make the hand carved look stand out - an you can see from this kind of blurry side view.
The pad sander was then used to clean the excess paint off of the raised areas around the design, and after much consideration an outline was established and cut out with the bandsaw. I used hand tools to rougly clean up the edges to give it a sort of hand hewn look.
The next step was to carve the decorative scrolls at the sides. Or so I thought. After making a couple of test carvings it was decided I had not left enough room for a nice scroll on either edge, so I chopped off the bumps that were waiting for it and finished off the piece.
I use Thompsons Water Seal for outdoor signs, even thought this was to be an indoor sign, so I gave it one nice light coat. Here is the sign after the water seal. The original picture was not great (I am increasingly unhappy with my Olympus Digital Camera) so I have posted a better one.
Once the water seal was truly dry, thirty days according to the manufacturer for my application, I used artist's oils to touch up the sign with a little color. Here is the finished project. Again, I will post a better picture when I have time. Well, here it is. This is a much better shot of the finished product. If I remember I will post a page on the latest sign project I am working on. Hope you liked it.
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