Hey guys. How's it going? Today I’m going to be showing
you how I made this sign for our son's room. Our son is due on April 4th. We're super excited
to be adding a little boy to the family so I wanted to make him a special sign.
We do have the plans available for this on our website and all the
tools used in this video are linked down below. So without further ado let's get right into it.
Starting off by applying some double-sided tape to the back of this half-inch plywood,
and then putting it down on the Stepcraft m-700 CNC machine. This is one of the few desktop-size
CNC machines that has the option for an automatic tool changer, and it's definitely a really nice
feature and speeds things up quite a bit. I'll pick up the 1/8 inch compression bit.
Compression bits have a up cut portion and a down cut portion of the bit so that you get a
clean top and bottom surface of the material. Especially with plywood it's very important to
do that. It doesn't work for all sorts of cuts as the first pass has to be below the up cut portion
of the bit otherwise you'll end up with some tear out just like if you were using an upcut bit.
We'll take two passes through this half inch plywood to get to the full depth and it goes
through at about 40 inches per minute is what I have it set at. Here this one is in real time just
to give you an idea of what that looks like. And then we'll cut out the circle. this will be the
main piece for the entire sign and what everything will stick to. I wanted to make sure that I got
that kind of wavy grain in there for the top of the sign as that is what will be visible.
We get pulled off the CNC. I’m not entirely sure why I use tabs there because I definitely didn't
need to. The double-sided tape sticks really well. And here you can see what that compression bit
does, leaving that clean top and bottom surface. So we'll get some more double-sided tape applied
to some eighth inch Baltic birch plywood and this will be for everything else.
So we got that applied down to the CNC and we'll drop the compression
bit off and pick up a 1/16 inch down cut bit. If you love this type of content, be sure to
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So this will display the tool database. this is what I currently have in there.
The down cut action of the bit will leave a clean top surface. We don't
need to worry about the bottom surface here. I went through did the pockets first and then
cut out the profiles with the name. Picked out the top of the “I” so that I wouldn't lose it
while it was cutting since it popped out, and then we'll go through and cut the trees for the sign.
This 1/16 inch bit is a really small diameter, can definitely pick up a lot of the fine
detail in your design. So this one worked out well, and it's always really cool to see the
sawdust all come off to reveal the design. So we did that for all of the other pieces - I’ll get
those vacuumed off - and then we'll drop off the 1/16 inch bit and pick up a 1/8 inch down cut bit.
I could certainly have used the 1/16 inch for everything but this eighth inch down cut
bit I can run at a faster speed and I can take a full depth of cut in a single pass.
So I generally recommend doing one time the diameter of the bit for most of the bits,
and this one is eighth-inch plywood so we can cut it all in a single pass.
So this is one of the shots from our vlog series. If you haven't seen those definitely check those
out. It kind of goes behind the scenes of what it all goes into making a video. I definitely think
it's pretty interesting and it's definitely worth watching too so… it also gives more information on
kind of what we're doing and why we're doing it. So we'll get that all pulled off the CNC machine.
Unfortunately the name did not work out at all and it kept breaking because of how thin the plywood
is. So I decided to take that as an opportunity and make it out of hardwood. So I got some walnut
and we'll switch back out for that 1/16 inch bit, and then we'll cut the same design into there.
I wanted to do an onion skinning method on here, so I’m cutting the bare design first and we will
use that to determine whether I have the correct z height set or not. Unfortunately I did not,
so I had to raise the z height just a little bit. That way we don't cut all the way through the wood
when we cut out the final name piece. So the idea here is is that you won't cut
all the way through. You'll leave a little bit of material there on the back side.
That way the design stays intact. And then I can take it over to the drum sander
and remove the rest of the material that's left. We'll get that pulled up. The double-sided tape
definitely still stuck down really well. I removed the top of the “I” so that it wouldn't get sucked
up into the drum sander or anything like that. So we go down in multiple passes,
taking off a little bit at a time until we arrive to where it's removed all of that.
I dropped it here, so luckily it was made out of hardwood so it didn't break at all.
So that one is ready to go and I took that opportunity to use the spalted maple to redo
his first name - that way it would kind of match and look a little bit
more unique with the hardwood versus just the plywood, and this will also allow me to add a
round over on the top of it using the CNC machine. That way we don't have to mess with handling small
pieces like this on the router table. So we're dropping that off and picking
up the point roundover bit. This is just a 1/16 inch radius point round over. You can
see that it just eases those edges over making it kind of like hand sanding something over.
With the smaller pieces that can be kind of difficult, and especially on the router table
it makes it really difficult to hold anything down, so doing it on the CNC kind of adds a
little bit of a safety factor to it as well. So we can get that pulled up off of the CNC
bed and as you can see there again we did not go all the way through. Then we'll just run it
through the drum sander again a few times until it breaks through that onion skin
and we have these pieces ready to go. So all of those are done and we can
get that kind of assembled just to see what everything is going to look like.
I really like the look of the hardwood. I definitely think it
adds quite a bit to the overall sign. And we can move on to painting,
staining, and finishing everything. So using General Finishes Armor Seal
in satin. We got all of the hardwood pieces done. Those guys look really nice with that finish on
there and it's a low gloss so I really like that. So then I’ll use the Perfect Gray Milk Paint
to do the back sign, and then the Driftwood to do the middle one, and then I’ll use Lamp Black for
the front one. I really like the contrast between these three pieces and it looks really nice.
I’ll use the emerald green color for all of the trees and a Spiced Walnut General
Finishes stain for the main circle piece. We got all of those ready to go. On special
projects like this one I always write a letter on the back. So this one's going to be no different.
So I’m just going to write a note for him that he can read one day when he's a little bit older.
So that is done and we can get all of these pieces glued down. For that I’m going to be
using some Starbond Adhesives Thick Super Glue. This stuff dries pretty quickly so
I just need to hold it down in place for a little bit and then I also do use some pin
nails here to hold everything in place underneath where I’m going to be gluing the next piece on.
The trees are getting glued on and the bear as well and I’m going to use the black piece as a
template because I need to trim those trees up a little bit that way they are flush to that.
I was incredibly nervous about doing this as there is a little bit of tolerance there where
the bearing is touching the wood so if the wood were to lift it would cause an issue.
Luckily the micro jig grip block held everything down nice and flat to the router table.
All went really well. Just a tiny little bit of cleanup work with a knife and then I used
some extra paint with some painters tape around where I don't want it to paint those that way
everything looked like it was meant to be there. So we got that all glued down. And then I’ll just
use the circle that we cut out earlier to line up the grain and make sure that
I have everything perfectly square on here. So I used a bit of blue tape and that almost
acted as a fence that I could reference up against when putting all of these pieces down so I got
everything installed and that worked really well and that glue just dries on its own very quickly.
So then I did the same thing for the middle name here and I used a small tip that comes with all
of the Starbond Adhesive Super Glue and that worked really well for all of these small pieces
getting the glue exactly where I wanted it, so I got everything lined up and
then did the same for all of the other pieces. And that's going to wrap this one up I’m really
happy with the way that everything turned out I love that the middle name kind of blends into
the background so it's not as noticeable, but the first name stands out. I’ll let my daughter help
me with putting everything up. - We got Eli's sign.
- Woo! - A little bit up a little higher!
- Left side down… - Yeah those don't really work on you do they?
Thank you guys so much for watching our video. I really appreciate it. Be sure to check out those
links down in the description, and be sure to subscribe to the channel right over here
and check out another great video right over here. Have a great day everybody.