Hey guys, I'm Nate welcome back to the workshop where today we're going to be building a brilliant board a light-up announcement board
That's easily visible in daylight, or dark the supplies for this build are very simple
We have just a scrap of wood board that was about 1 inch thick before it was planed
We've got a sheet of acrylic plastic 8 inches by 10 inches a set of poster lights
Which is a string of battery-powered LEDs and some wood glue?
We've also got some liquid chalk markers, which we'll use for writing on our board once
It's complete you may have also noticed that there is a table saw on the workbench with me and that is what we're going to
Be using to cut up this board
We're going to be building this board in a little bit of a strange order because to get some of the exact
Measurements we have to cut a piece and then measure it
using our clear piece of
Plastic as a guide for what width to move on to so the first step is going to be cutting a long strip off of
One edge of this board with our blade tilted at an angle
Our blade is going to cut the board at an angle so we want to set our guide to a point where we have about
1/2 of an inch on the bottom being cut that will of course give us a wider amount at the top
that is what the angle does
We've now got our board and the piece that we cut off of it, which fit nicely together of course
But the other advantage of cutting it at an angle like this
Is we can now flip that piece upside down and when we line it up with the edge? We get one continuous
Angle from one piece into the next that's what we're after after cutting off that first strip
We can now cut our board and the strip down to the width that our brilliant board is going to be
It's going to be based on this 8 by 10 sheet of acrylic so we can make our board 8 inches wide
Let's measure that off on both of these pieces and cut them on the chop saw
Let's cut a second eight-inch piece off of our trimmed bit
Now here is why we
Wanted to cut these two pieces before we cut the rest of our board we want to be sure that these two pieces
Perfectly sandwich the acrylic board that's gonna be in between them, so let's take our acrylic board sandwich it between the two thin pieces
We've cut and now we can line it up on the base and measure exactly how wide we want the base to be?
Now this line along the top of our board indicates where we want the highest portion of our angled cut to go
So to figure out where we want the whole slope
let's line one of these other pieces up and
Mark that along the edge of our board this should help us line our saw blade up. Just where we want it
With that side
Cut we should be able to sandwich our plastic board in between our two top rails and have it line up. Just right
To make a nice continual sort of pyramid shape that's looking at excellent
We'll be using this string of battery-powered LEDs to light up our board and those need to shine through this piece right here
So in order to do that we need to drill a lot of holes to let a lot of LED light through this
LED string is super basic
It just has a battery box with a switch that goes from off to flashing to on and this string of 20 LEDs
This is designed to be used as a decorative element
Around some sort of poster that you would make for a school project or something like that
But I think what we're using it for is a lot more fun
We're gonna want to drill 20 holes in a line down the middle of this piece of board
So let's measure off where those go get the right size drill bit and throw it on the drill press
To get all of those nice and lined up
One two three four five six seven eight nine 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 beautiful
Got the holes drilled now, let's just sand down to get rid of any of the burrs on the top
Our string of Lights is lining up nicely to fit into the holes that we've just drilled into our block of wood
But we can see that when we start putting all of the lights in place
We have quite a bit of extra wire looped at the bottom
Let's add two more rails of basically the exact same size and shape
Onto the bottom of our board this will continue the same slope that we had before
While leaving enough space that we should be able to conceal the wires entirely inside
We've still got quite a bit of wood left on our original board
So let's cut off another strip at an angle and then cut that to the right length
We've now got two rails that will run along the top of that block and to the O run along the bottom
I'll start by gluing the two bottom rails on and once that's dry. I'll move on to the top rails
All right looking good
The word fits in and back out
We've got our little pyramid going now these pieces are all together and before we install our LED lights
Let's take some measurements to cut out a base piece
We've got the rest of our board which already has our angled cut on one side
So we just need to measure where to put it on the other side
Now of course we don't need this whole block back to the chop saw
With our base block cut we now want to install our lights before we glue that down, otherwise. We'll never get those in there
Now to make this fit we just need to take all of these wires and sort of press them down
Into the gap there's plenty of space in between our two side runners. We just need to make all the wires
You know agree?
All right now that we've got all the wires just sort of pressed in there
Let's add some glue onto the sides and then fit our base block down on there and clamp it in place
That's a good-looking base the lights turn on they are entirely contained within the structure
That's just what we want to see let's clean this up
Just a little bit, so let's take some sandpaper and bring these edges down to one smooth plane
I don't want to leave this wood colored
So I'm gonna tape off some of the exposed openings and a little bit the light strip inside and then hit it with some black
paint
Our paint is dry. Let's peel off the tape and attach our switch to the back of it
We want our battery case to be somewhere that we can easily access it to change the batteries and to turn the switch on and
Off this battery pack comes with these two pads of sticky foam tape with a protective backing
We should be able to peel that off and stick it on to our base
Now let's try and take this extra wire and fit it back into the empty space
inside
Now we've got our eight inch by ten inch sheet of acrylic plastic and this has a protective film on both sides of it
Let's peel off one side, but not the other side just yet the bottom of this sheet of acrylic is pretty nice and smooth
It's not perfectly clear
But it's really close and we want to leave it that way so the light can easily shine into the board the other three sides
However, we're going to sand
Not only are we gonna sand the very edge?
But we're also going to sand a little bit of an angle which will help it be a lot more visible if you're looking at
the front of the brilliant board
With the edges sanded let's now wash off our board using water and a soft cloth
We want to make sure that we aren't using anything that will scratch the surface of the plastic
Because any scratches will show up with the light
And there's not going to be a good way to get rid of them at
This point we need to take our chalk markers and decide what we want our sign to say
Be aware that when this fits in the very bottom of the board isn't going to be visible so make sure your design
starts above the level of the base I
Left the sticky sheet on the back of this piece of acrylic so that I can easily lay it down on the table without worrying
About scratching up my sheet in the future
I'll have to be sure that I always lay this down on a nice soft clean surface
So I don't scratched up, but for now we're ready to peel off the back. Let's take our board and fit it into our stand
Now these markers are pretty opaque so of course this sign is visible in the daylight
But the real advantage is that when it's dark you can turn the light on and it's visible in the dark, too
But let's turn out the light and see how this thing looks
Jarvis Culpeper
You can use these signs for all sorts of things menus, business signs, announcements, or even just the fun night light
Hey guys. Thanks for watching if you're not a subscriber yet
Just hit the bomb to get in the club if you missed our last video
We need to check it out again click up here at the top click down there if you want to see what the internet thinks
That you should be watching next that's it for now have fun. Be safe and see you tomorrow