Had to look up some of the higher numbers, I couldn't remember what "L" and "C" represented, and had forgotten all about "D". LOL Its been a LONG time since I saw those in school.
M = 1000
D = 500
C = 100
L = 50
X = 10
V =5
I = 1
MDCCLXXVI, essentially, turns into a math problem. 1000+500+100+100+50+10+10+5+1=1776. The year that the American colonies told England to stuff it. Then showed them where to stuff it.
This was a quick cut, not a lot of internals, six I believe. Outside cut was pretty involved, but nothing difficult. Choice of wood could've been better, I thought the knot and rugged look of pallet slats, since it was a rough year for everybody. The knot (base of the X's) separated on me and had to be carefully glued back together. Again, though, rough-n-rugged worked for me. For the base, I was just going to do an oval, then figured I'd pull in the original 13 colonies and see how that looked. I'm happy with the outcome. The 13 give it a good solid base so I'm not worried about the knots.