Router Sign Wood Preferences

When I first started routing signs, I used pine. It is a soft wood that enabled easy movement of the router, but sometimes the router is too easy to move. Another nice side affect from pine is that it is easy to cover up mistakes.

-- Brian, Lebanon PA, If you aren’t having fun doing it, find something else to do.

Good ol Pine. Hard to beat. Thanks brian.

Brett

I’ve done some routed signs in redwood but I was using one of those guide sets.

One thing I’ve noticed is that some softwoods have much harder late growth rings—the darker rings. You might have some troubles with keeping the router from following those rings. I’d be inclined to use something like basswood or yellow poplar for freehand guided routing. Those woods tend to be more consistent in hardness.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

I have my students do this project during my unit on routers. Most find it easier than it looks. We just use a word processor to print out a pattern, and then use carbon paper to transfer the pattern. For cost we use Pine or poplar wood. Both stain an paint well. Oak works, but can burn easier. A good wood in the middle is sassafrass, it resembles oak, but cuts and routers like pine. I tell my students to take their time and burn marks are okay since we paint the letters. We just brush on craft paint with small art brushes, then the next day after it dries, run it one pass through the planer. Next we spray aerosol clearcoat on top. Don’t use a brush or be careful if you do, because the clearcoat will pool up in the letters.

Send me a note if you need any more info on this project. Also one of my students, tooldadapprentice, here on LJ has a couple of his sign’s posted on the project forum. It was his first attempt.

I route, hand carve and sandblast wood signs..I use redwood for sandblasting, and cypress for routing and carving.
Cypress is very good at being rot and bug free. My home is built of cypress and we have no bugs here and I’ve never had to replace any of it..built in 1974…and I’ve never had a cypress sign to go bad on me in 25 years.

bruc

-- "Give The Gift of Life, Adopt A Child"

I have made outdoor signs out of cedar and indoor signs of pine and cherry.

I use an old piece of software to design my signs. This software will enable me to resize the image as large or small as I want it to be. I have not found a replacement piece of software that will do the same thing.
Once sized I trace it onto the wood so I have a good design layout (hopefully) follow with my router.

dataman—for .jpg’s etc try GIMP nearly as complete as Photoshop, the manual is a separate download. Warning, can be a bit overwhelming!

-- Fred, Springfield, Ma