Wedding Guest Book / Wall Hanging Decor

[kmmcrafts]

This is a bit different and I thought I'd share what I did here. I was asked by the last minute if I could make a 23" tall letter that would be the last name and be used as a guest book that would double as wall decor rather than an actual book that gets thrown into a box or drawer and never to be seen again sort of thing. They sent me a Etsy listing of a person that was selling them.. made from what appeared to be 1/4" plywood and engraved and cut on a large laser and in my opinion poorly stained .. I'm not a huge fan of staining wood especially plywood.. always "looks cheap made to me" so I opted to do a large glue up 30 x 26 ish so I had some wiggle room for planer snipe etc. 

I started out with some rough cut 3/4 ish inch walnut lumber and by the time I got down to some good flat wood I ended up at around 5/8" and glued up two 6.5 inch wide boards twice to end up with two 13 ish wide boards which I then planed down to smooth out any imperfections of the glued boards which took me down to close to 1/2" and then glued those together.  Was able to glue up nice and flat enough that I really didn't need to surface it on the CNC so just run my ROS to smooth it out good and top coated the whole board on all edges and back and front with lacquer to help keep it from movement as I didn't want to end up with a cupped glue up, LOL CNC doesn't get along with cupped boards too well, LOL

Created this letter and added names and date in my CNC software since they didn't want this cut all the way through like a scroll saw would do and too big to fit in my laser. I carved the design and then cut out the profile on the CNC and left me with tons of sanding since I really didn't have the right end mill for doing this. Hand painted the carved area with acrylic paint and top coated with Lacquer.

Anyway, the carving came out great.. but then when I changed the machine up from the V-bit to the end mill to cut the profile I apparently saved the wrong file and it started doing the same carve as the V-bit but with a end mill instead. I stopped the machine immediately and thought I was going to have to just start over with a whole new glue up. Then before removing anything off the machine in case I thought of a way to fix this issue and risk moving it so the alignment wouldn't be off. I got the idea to fill in the comma and the number 9 with glue and some of the sawdust from the same boards since I used the bandsaw and had a pile of fine sawdust.. Next day I went and tried to carve again with the V-bit and edited my profile to actually cut the profile. 

This is the finished project. You can somewhat tell I did the glue / sawdust fill but only because I know it's there, so far I've had to point this out to everyone that has seen it and then they really don't see it.. LOL The camera seems to pick it up more than the naked eyes do..  

We decided to not install any hangers on it yet because if they run out of space on the front it could be flipped over to the back. They got fine point paint markers to use. Hopefully it works out for them. 

Edited June 21, 2024 by kmmcrafts

[rjweb]

Kevin,very nice project. Now what do the guest do just sign the wood? That's different never saw anything like that before, maybe I should do that when i die, RJ

[kmmcrafts]

3 hours ago, rjweb said:

Kevin,very nice project. Now what do the guest do just sign the wood? That's different never saw anything like that before, maybe I should do that when i die, RJ

Yes, they just sign anywhere on the wood. I'd never heard of such a thing myself until I got the request to make it..