For Christmas this year I decided to make wood signs for the family lake house. The roads to get to the house are narrow enough to fit one car, and you have to make several turns down these roads to eventually get to the house. I think this is probably standard lake protocol… so that is essentially what I set out to do.It had been a while since I had done anything artistic that didn’t involve a computer… and while a computer was used in the process… for the most part – it was pretty hands on, leaving me smelling like burnt wood and sawdust. These aren’t completely done… but I’m at a good stopping point so I thought I would share.First thing… I set the type and set up some separations to cut some vinyl.

Sir Alex was gracious enough to help with the plotting (THANKS DUDE!!!)

Gradation detail:

Tools for the job. Some stuff I had on-hand… but I bought a few new things to try and make this work… including a router for the Dremel.

This cost $40 and was exactly what I had in mind.

So I slapped one on for placement so I could measure my cuts for the rest of the signs.

After that, I sliced and diced them to size.

Then it was time to try and test things out and figure out the process for the rest of the signs. I had an idea what I wanted to do… and as I went, things sort of changed.I applied some wood finish over the vinyl.

Originally I planned to paint in the gradation.

But when I pulled the vinyl off… it was a MESS (no photo). The wood stain seeped under it really bad. Because of this, I broke open the router and gave it a whirl. I would like to point out that my Grandfather Whitney’s awesome shop glasses helped me make this signs what they are.

So with that starting to look okay… I decided to start in on the rest.

And repeated the process.

The router-attachment makes it easy… but kind of hard too. If it runs too deep then it catches the wood on fire. The sawdust makes things difficult enough, but add smoke to the mix, and I’m flying blind for sure.

Then I decided to torch the tops and bottoms. I thought they would look better black, and I didn’t want to paint them. Plus some of the stain dripped down, and I didn’t like how that looked.

So this is where they are at now.

Stage 1 complete. Stage 2 will include pulling the remaining black vinyl off, and then possibly use a wood burner to darken them up. The black vinyl as-is, will not stand the test of time out in the elements. Then I hope to be able to re-apply the gradation vinyl and get those lines on the letterforms. I may possibly try to take another pass with the router for a deeper cut. Then I think they will be ready to hang. I will post more as I make some more progress!