Engraved and Painted Camping Sign - Using CNC Router and Oramask 813

welcome to flash tracks woodworking in today's episode we'll be making the final copy of this wooden camping sign this particular set that you see now is a trial version made out of some scrap pallet boards but we're making the final version out of some good cedar boards which will be more weather resistant the issue with the cedar however is it's open grain and the paint tends to run along the fibers and sometimes spoil the good crisp lettering that we want so i've been experimenting with this board and some techniques that i've looked at on other youtube videos and also some ideas of my own to keep good crisp painted letters on our final board to do that i'll be using some aura mask to mask off the lettering i'll be using some sanding sealer to to seal the edges down inside the pockets in order to keep the paint from wicking along there and then also a spiral down cut bit which i found will form good sharp edges at the corners without causing the mask to kind of fuzz up a bit and give it some issues when we're trying to paint also be using the cnc machine picture behind me to get generally good form letters to start with so with that let's have a look at the steps we need to accomplish this project the first order of business is to get some perfectly straight and true edges on the boards that i'm going to edge glue i don't own a joiner so i'll be using my sled in order to get the edges that i need i'll take my two true edges apply some wood glue and clamp them up so that i have a board that's wide enough for the top portion of the camping sign with the glue dry and the clamps removed we'll begin our preparation steps by sanding with 220 grit sandpaper then wiping off the dust with a towel and some tack cloth and then applying some sanding sealer these are fairly important steps that are needed to get good crisp black painted letters on our sign so i'll be summarizing them later in the video and also putting them in the description while the sanding sealer is drying we'll be using some aura mask to cut out some pieces to cover the board so that the paint will only rest down inside the pockets that we're going to make with the cnc machine since the aura mask is somewhat expensive about a dollar a square foot i'm only going to cut enough mask to cover the areas where the pocketed letters are going to be i want to make sure that i'm burnishing out all of the air pockets and also ensuring that i have intimate contact everywhere between the aura mask and the cedar surface here's a drawing for the smaller board that we're going to add the city and state and also the cutout for the state of ohio so if we bring in those elements the the text that we're going to put in cortland ohio the ohio map and then also the cutout boundary i've already got tool paths set up for those the the pocketed parts the city and state as well as the pocketed state outline are filled in there and then the cut out will be done there if we render those see the bit moving around there and then kind of rotate it and this will be our first cnc machining operation to get the lower part of the sign now we'll head over to the cnc power it up clamp down the board perform the zeroing and then cut pockets for the city and state lettering and the state outline i'll be using a 1 8 inch diameter spiral down cut and mill the down cut will give us sharp corners and reduce splintering i'll be moving at 30 inches per minute with pass of 80 thousandths deep to complete the cutout operation i'll swap in a 3 16 inch end mill 0 then proceed with the operation the end mill will be passing around the perimeter of the board at 50 inches per minute it will make seven passes at approximately 1 8 of an inch deep in order to make its way fully through the board and release it it will be leaving some tabs so that the sign won't separate from the outside piece and rattle around and then we'll remove those tabs afterwards here i'm taking the board off the bed of the cnc bringing it out to a flat surface flipping it over and then using a hammer and a chisel just to break through those tabs from the back side next i'll walk the board over to the vise and remove the tab remnants with a flat file since i cut it a little too close being frugal with the aura mask i'm going to add a little bit of painters tape to make sure when i'm painting down inside the letters i don't overrun onto the cedar background you may recall that we applied sanding sealer to the board early on but that was before we cut through the mask with the router bit so now we've exposed essentially end grain down inside the pockets where the paint can wick up along the fibers of the board so we're going to apply sanding sealer again and make sure we tuck it into the sides of the pockets to try to prevent that paint from wicking along the grain underneath of the mask and spoiling our nice crisp letters because we're applying the sanding sealer down in the pockets it can tend to puddle a little bit down in there so at the end of the sealing operation i'll use a cloth just to remove the excess inside of the pockets now hopefully we've limited the paint to only appear down inside of the pockets we've limited it vertically using the mask and we've limited horizontal wicking with that last coat of sanding sealer now it's time for the big reveal we've let the paint set for an hour and a half or two hours it's dry to the touch but maybe not fully cured yet it's time to remove the mask this can either be the most satisfying part of the operation or the most frustrating if we didn't do it right if it works it's kind of like when you get your new phone and you peel that plastic off the front ah what a feeling so let's pull the mask off and see what we have left below in this case spoiler alert it's a pretty good result you will notice near the end of the operation you need to use some sort of pick or in this case a razor blade to remove the insides of the letters that have a surrounding border but no big deal the mask comes off pretty well and we're left as i said with a pretty pleasing result having had good success with the smaller portion of the sign we'll move on now to the larger part of the sign while the sanding sealer is drying go to the drawing program and create tool paths for the upper portion of the sign since we've already discussed all of the steps for the small portion i'll move through them more quickly here and then summarize them near the end and down in the description so here we go for the main top portion of the sign in succession we will mask and burnish clamp the work piece pocket the lettering and decoration park the router to reveal the pocketed result file the tabs apply sanding sealer then paint down in the recesses now that the paint has had a couple hours to dry it's time to peel the mask i find it's best to peel the mask the same day it's applied so you may want to start these kinds of projects earlier in the morning i'll peel as much as i can by hand and then use a snap off utility knife to pull the pieces out of the centers of the letters with the pocketing painting and cutouts completed we use a 1 8 inch round over bit to soften up the corners on all sides of both sides the only surfaces of the signs that do not have sanding sealer on them now are the edges of the signs i'll set up my drying rack and then i'll put sanding sealer all around the outside edges as well as on places where i've repaired blemishes with some sanding in order to make sure i have sanding sealer on off surfaces to be ready for the final polyurethane top coat i'll be using the same technique i used on that small trowel piece of cedar using this minwax one coat polyurethane it's water-based easy cleanup also a little more clear than the oil-based versions i know it's going to be a little tricky with the polyurethane tending to gather down in the pockets i experienced this on the test piece but once the dried results seem to be pretty good so i'm just going to repeat that process here on the two signs near the end of the top coat operation i'll use the bristles of the brush to try to clean out any excess polyurethane down in the pockets i'll use a dry clean piece of paper towel to clean off the bristles as i remove that excess polyurethane here are the list of steps i promised for the surface preparation the masking the pocketing the sealing the painting and the top coating i'll also include them in the description with even more detail the polyurethane is dry i've used a few of these simple screw eyes and also a few links of this black chain in order to connect the top portion of the sign with the name and the welcome with the bottom portion of the sign that has the city and the state so the sign is ready to be hung by the client at the anniversary hartman's one of the features of this sign it's a little unusual is it's double-sided symmetric can be read from either side so the sign can either be front facing or hung more in a mailbox type of arrangement to be read from either side so that pretty much completes the woodworking project like and subscribe if you want to see more videos like this see the description down below to get more details on the exact procedure that i used if you want to try to duplicate it leave me a comment or question and then check out the videos that will pop up here on your right side for more related types of project as always thanks for watching flash tracks woodworking we'll see you again next time

Channel: Flash Trax Woodworking

Views: 6,541

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Id: VEQewPYu5vc

Length: 11min 42sec (702 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2020