In this thread: Appalachian Trail Sign
I discussed making a sign for a customer’s husband to track his mileage progress on the Appalachian Trail.
There were lots of good ideas there and I did 4 or 5 designs for her to review. Ultimately she decided that she liked the look of the original one I proposed.
I had to copy / paste / flip the mountain to get it wide enough without distorting. No, it isn’t the Appalachian Mountains, but it’s what she wanted, I tried a few others.
The logo and the word MILES are about 3/4” thick and embedded and glued in pockets that I cut into the maple backplane. I had to sneak up on the pocket dimension so that it was nice and tight with no gap. I guess those are outlays instead of inlays.
The mountains were cut out of a piece of 1” walnut. I had planned to cut a pocket in the maple for the top edge of the mountains to nestle into, but after a couple of tests that didn’t pan out I just decided to glue the mountains to the surface of the maple.
The numbers are .45” walnut with maple inlay. That was a double sided carve. I put even numbers on one side and odd on the other. Needed 3 of most numbers and 4 of the 1 and 2. I cut 2 blank ones just in case I messed some up but it all worked out. They were on a single board and each side inlay was on a board.
After gluing and running through the bandsaw and drum sander:
And then finally cutting them out:
I medium walnut danish oil on the whole thing and then 3 coats of shellac. I am planning to deliver on Friday.
It took a lot of design work and there were some tense moments but I am super happy with the results.
UPDATE: it’s 11.25”x18”