Project Information
Was commissioned to make a sign for a recent retiree by several of his friends. I said I know just the chunk of wood for the job and this is how it turned out.
I had a very large black walnut limb sawed up several years ago here in Minnesota and the sawyer did a good job of leaving me some interesting cutoffs. This one was amazing to me. It looked like a flaming wooden comet. Walnut bark has some amazing patterns and details and the long tail of bark really was too cool. I sanded it and varnished it years ago but a couple years ago SWMBO asked that it be removed from the house. It languished in my shop until its true purpose was revealed.
I laid out the letters in CorelDraw and used a marking knife to transfer the basic pattern to the wood and then used a little Bosch hand router with a coring bit and hand routed it very carefully. It came out nice and rustic looking , in other words, not perfect but I liked it. I then brushed a lot of pickled oak stain into the grooves and voila, there we have it. A little sanding and some more coats of spray poly was all it took. There's a keyhole slot in the back at the balance point so it is easy to hang.
That's my story and I'm sticking with it. Thanks for looking.
I had a very large black walnut limb sawed up several years ago here in Minnesota and the sawyer did a good job of leaving me some interesting cutoffs. This one was amazing to me. It looked like a flaming wooden comet. Walnut bark has some amazing patterns and details and the long tail of bark really was too cool. I sanded it and varnished it years ago but a couple years ago SWMBO asked that it be removed from the house. It languished in my shop until its true purpose was revealed.
I laid out the letters in CorelDraw and used a marking knife to transfer the basic pattern to the wood and then used a little Bosch hand router with a coring bit and hand routed it very carefully. It came out nice and rustic looking , in other words, not perfect but I liked it. I then brushed a lot of pickled oak stain into the grooves and voila, there we have it. A little sanding and some more coats of spray poly was all it took. There's a keyhole slot in the back at the balance point so it is easy to hang.
That's my story and I'm sticking with it. Thanks for looking.