Good Morning
I am making a flag that will hold a shell casing for my dad, and a challenge coin. I made it out of oak, but don’t know how to make the stars and the lettering pop-out. Any suggestions. This is my first project on the shapeoko 4 pro, so keep it simple please.
Tim
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Contrast!! You want to make either the stars & letters, or the top surface a contrasting color.
It’s easier to do if you plan ahead rather than after it’s already cut.
You can stain the top surface before cutting, the the cut features will be the original wood color.
You can seal & finish the top surface, then use a mask allowing you to paint cut features.
With it already cut, you could hand paint the stars & letters. Or you could seal the whole thing very well, spray paint it, and then take a thin surface cut to remove the paint from the top surface.
Filling the cut features with epoxy and then surfacing it flat is also an option.
Since this piece is already cut I would go with Tod’s suggestion of using epoxy. You could go with a black color as that would be very easy to mix and apply just in the areas you want. Then sand down to remove the excess in those areas. Finnish with shellac, poly, or whatever your favorite is.
You could also do add a thin coat of white epoxy to the cut out stripes and around the cut out border of the lettering. Mixing it to be somewhat transparent would be a bit harder but not really too difficult, and would leave the nice looking grain showing.
If you do decide to try epoxy, try on a test piece first. You may find the epoxy will soak into the grain of the wood, and the color may travel with it. The piece may have to be sealed so that the epoxy stays in the carved areas.
As @mhotchin suggested about epoxy it can seep into the grain of oak. There are a couple of solutions.
Coat the project with Zinsser Universal Sanding Sealer with 2-3 coats. This is dewaxed shellac. One coat will not do it but 2-3 and let it dry about 20 minutes between coats. Give it a light sand at 320 grit after the final coat has dried.
Apply a coat of epoxy (not filling. and allow it to dry. If you are going to color the epoxy just make your first coat clear. That will dry and give you a stable base to keep the colored epoxy from soaking into the grain of oak.
