Plywood Recommendations for Signs?

Hi All,
I’m looking to purchase a couple of sheets of plywood from home depot to play around with a few sign ideas but I don’t have a ton of experience cutting wood and am hoping to get a few recommendations on what cuts well. I was originally going to go with poplar plywood but I came across a few posts of people having trouble cutting it. Is that something I should stay away from?

In what way will you be cutting the signs?

Complete profile cuts and assembling elements as layers?

V carving?

How will the signs be finished?

Would plastic be an option? Folks have done well w/ PVC.

Hey Will,
I’ll most likely be going with signs with raised letters so I’ll be running pocket cuts mostly with smaller endmills for detail. I’m not quite sure about finishing yet, some type of eco friendly stain i imagine as i try to stay away from chemicals whenever i can.

I’d suggest Baltic Birch or some equivalent then (you’ll need for there not to be voids).

Or, consider the PVC — it’s really easily cut, takes finish well, and holds up outdoors and is lighter than plywood.

Thanks for the advice, I check to see if birch is a available. I actually do have a few pieces of pvc but I want to try a few projects out of wood. It’s the one material i haven’t really cut much if you can believe that :slight_smile:

Don’t want to hijack this thread, but can anyone give me a good description of what type and thickness of PVC are you using to make signs out of for outside usage. I have used lots of wood, cherry, black walnut, oak, maple, etc but have not used any PVC. When I look on line to search for any, all I seem to see is 1/16 to 1/4" stuff which doesn’t seem to me to work very well when I’m use to 3/4-2" wood signs.

Any additional input or even a link to what to use would be a great start.

Thanks

I just used a peice of 3/4’ pvc trim board to make a set of house numbers and it turned out really well. My first attempt wasnt great but after switching over to a single flute bit and and a slightly shallower doc, it worked alot better.

3 Likes

Looks GREAT!
I can find 1/2" x 6" bds at Lowes and Home D, but it looks like your board is about 8" or so and I would really like to see if I might find something in the 12-24" x 4’ area if possible.

Not sure if/who might have it

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