Robin’s Nest Sign

I began making signs with my CNC and it didn’t take long to get commissioned to make a custom sign. Word of mouth is an amazing thing. I was asked to make a sign for a business in Windsor, Colorado. You can find more about them here. I was simply sent a PDF of their logo and asked if I could make a sign from it.

Robin’s Nest logo as I received it before making the sign.

Of course I said I could do it but I knew it would be a challenge. The nest in the design was super intricate and I had no idea how I would achieve a look from wood that would look exactly like the logo.

To make it even more challenging they wanted it to be 30″ x 25″ and 3″ thick. which is bigger than my machine’s max dimensions of about 24.5″ by 24.5″. The sign was to be made of redwood on top of it all. The first challenge would be just to find a piece of redwood big enough to cut the sign from.

I opted to make the sign out of laminated redwood 2″ x 4″s so after a trip to the store and some hand picked lumber later I began to cut the wood down to 30″ strips and glue them together until I achieved a full piece 25″ tall. I made sure to the edges to be bonded together before gluing them, not sure how much difference this would make but figured I wanted the mating surfaces to be as flat as possible.

Once all the pieces were sanded as flat as possible I began to glue them together. I used Titebond II glue and rolled it onto both surfaces of each board before pressing them together. The plan was to put all the pieces together and them clamp them all at once. I didn’t quite have enough clamping force to fully squeeze out all the warping or bowing in each board but for the most part it worked sufficiently. 

After drying for a day or two I removed the clamps and now I needed to figure out a way to get a smooth surface and decided that the best way would be to run a clearing path with the router.

This worked really well to get a good flat surface. However, since the machine couldn’t quite go to the full dimensions of the sign it required a lot of moving around and resetting the machine to clear the entire thing, and I would have to do both sides. I also might note that since the final dimensions were to be 25″ by 30″ the stock material needed to start larger which further exaggerated the problem.

Eventually all the clearing toolpaths were finished and I decided to sand the machining marks off to start with a perfect board before beginning on the sign design. This part turned out really well and I knew I was off to a good start.

Starting the fun part!

More to come soon!