Humble little Round Overs

[joe]

Brad Point Bits.

For the newbee these are powerful tools which should be considered and used. There are two techniques which should be considered. Brad points come in lots of sizes and I'd suggest owning all of them. When ordering, be sure they are not rounded over on the tips. They should be needle point. You should be careful when plunging too deep or the needle will break.

My favorite techniques are:
Roundover letters.
V Carving
Cutting Sandblast Mask on the final panel.



It takes a little experimenting to get the depth correct on roundover letters. On a six inch letter I drop down about 1/8”. Then continue down until you like the effect. Once finished up you should have a 3D looking letter that is much cleaner that 3D and ten times faster to produce.






Joe Crumley
www.normansignco.com

[VanIslanddan]

I also like these bits but I am unclear how V Carving works with a concave radius? Is the depth limited to the size of the radius? Could you post a picture?
Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

[Big-Tex]

Is the depth limited to the size of the radius?

Yes and no. Radius varry based on size of copy and desired look.

You could achieve what you see in Joe's picture but you can go deeper and get shoulder on profile for different look n give it a little shade to it.

[Rick W]

Thank you Joe!!

Looks very interesting, will have to git me some brad points and giver a try. I assume that for v carving you are basically just using the tip, correct?????

Thanks for sharing.

Rik

[joe]

I'll see if I can do a couple of little demo's showing how to employ these bits. Brad points, in the larger sizes, come with a ball nose. These are handy as they can be used to replace a strait bit on smaller letters and fret work.

One of the earlier posting I was showing how to make tiny little letters. These can also be done with a small brad point which gives a round over look. I can't be the only fellow doing this kind of work.

It's fun to work outside the sand box.


Joe Crumley
www.normansignco.com

[Rick W]

Nice, I look forward to seeing a demo!!

Rik

[Rob Gunn]

Joe, That is way cool. Thanks so much for showing this, I cant wait to get some of these and try it.

[powerlsc]

Thanks for the tips. I'm waiting for some copper paint I mail ordered and would like to try using it on letters formed with the roundover.

[sailfl]

Joe,


Which make of the bits have you found to last the longest? Thanks for the tip.

[joe]

It's good to find interest in using brad points. Some of the advantages are, rendering extremely fine detail, gives interesting shoulder effect, and can replace V bits in many processes. But, you gotta put one in the router to see for yourself.

When building a panel like this, I start out by testing depth and changing up bits. I'm about half done with these tests.








I'll probably use Trupan for the final piece and use the following painting techniques.


Joe Crumley
www.normansignco.com