Why are the "Freebies" the most work?

[myxpykalix]

You would think something as fairly simple as this wouldn't be as much work but i had to redo this THREE times!

On my first I cut the 3d finishing pass FIRST then applied sign mask, then ran the vcarving pass, sprayed in the letters and in some of the p's and a's the lkittle center tape peeled off and the spray filled in the letter and it looked like **** along with the font not cutting deep enough in some places.

So on the second one a forum member and friend recommended I change the font and carve the vcarving pass FIRST. Which I did only he forgot to tell me to turn on the spellchecker in my head hence the misspelled word at the bottom.

And no matter how much you look at it, that mistake won't change itself and you hope no one catches it, but you know they will.

So I got a piece of poplar REDID it for the THIRD time and if you see something wrong....DON'T TELL ME!

I do want some advice on how to maybe hilite the bone bash logo so it stands out without darkening the whole plaque. I have some gel stain, i have wood dye, and will go get what i need but i don't want to screw it up at this point.
I was also thinking that i need to use a clear glaze over all of it for protection, so i need finishing advice?

[Chrissy]

Jack - just to make you feel better......
In a previous life, I was onsite director of a development company which was an RV park and retirement village. Trying to get more visitors , I created a new event, National championships for disc bowls players, prepared artwork for double sided three fold brochure, got GPS co-ordinates from Bob, checked, checked and rechecked spelling, dates etc etc, got 27,000 yes 27,000 printed and they were duly distributed as insert in national magazine.

Two weeks later someone sent email asking when had we moved to 300 miles east of Australian mainland to somewhere in the Pacific Ocean!

Guess who had given me wrong GPS numbers??

Keep smiling - it's egg timers disease (three minute memory lapse)

Hugs Chrissy

[chiloquinruss]

LOL, yesterday at the Northwest Camp Bill asked if we had any suggestions to send into Vectric for future features, yep you guessed it, I suggested a Spell Checker for us sign dudes! :) Russ

[Bob Eustace]

Yes freebies give the most heartaches and Russ a spelling checker in Vectric wont help us! Did a lovely electricians sign. Being thorough we rang the phone number that was going on the sign and got the sparkie. Took a couple of months to do the sign and when presented we got the dreaded "its lvely BUT". He had upgraded his mobile and got a new number. We fixed it with a pocketed inlay. The guy felt awful and invited us to his sons birthday the next week. He was two at invite time. Made up a lovely LED acrylic with happy 2nd birthay Hamish. You you guessed it - he was turning three! Did a 5 foot sign for Rotary. Got the wording by email BUT at the prentation we noticed the banner had two ls in the name. Ours only had one! ALLAMARTA. But we did get the keyway right - this really upsets Rotarians when you leave it out! Thank God v carving makes it so easy!

Bob

[myxpykalix]

Well i guess i don't feel THAT bad after hearing these stories!:D

[Bob Eustace]

Well you did get arthritus right once!

[ssflyer]

To questions four you. Do you know how too use the spell checker on the computer?
Can you sea sum spelling mistakes inn this?
The spellchecker on my computer could knot fine any problems - awl my words were correct.
The grammar checker all so said my grandma was perfect.
Cheese

And for an interesting suggestion, try misspelling categories as catorgies, and see what Word suggests :)

[myxpykalix]

Well you did get arthritus right once!

Too bad YOU didn't.....:eek:

This was what i got for working when tired and frustrated:(

[Bob Eustace]

Not toooooo good on altzeimers either!

[cowboy1296]

I agree Jack, they are always the most work. And a spell checker in Aspire I would pay for, but hope it would be free.

[jerry_stanek]

What do is type my text in word and copy and paste

[Chuck Keysor]

Hello Jack. Pardon me for going a bit sideways from your direct question. But you have had a number of threads asking about wood finishing, staining and I think dying. All of these questions of course arise from the basic fact that you are working with wood.

I have done a lot of experimenting with V-carving using wood, and I wrestle with the same issues as you do. But I have also done some experimenting with other materials, in order to get away from the problems of finishing, in part, but also with the issue of wood grain competing with the visual/graphic design of the plaque. And I also have the issue with wood not laying perfectly flat. So one material I have been playing with is Vinyl Composite Tile/kitchen floor tile. It has no grain, will not warp, and lays flat when I use my Widgit Works pressure foot. To provide mechanical integrity, I glue on a Masonite backing onto the vinyl tile after the tile has been carved.

Most significantly, when I saw your plaque, I thought of a plaque that I was asked to make, with the promise of a free dinner! Well, that one plaque turned into two plaques (and I still only got one free dinner :(). Images of those two plaques are attached. The square one is 12" x 12" and the other is 12" x 10".

I was given a little general text, and told I had to put the GOP elephant onto each plaque. Well, not being a graphic artist, I tried all manner of things, with most designs looking just like a bunch of words spilled onto a plate. They weren't connected visually. And the elephant thing just didn't work. So, I kept revising and reworking, trying to make something that looked like a composition. The one award was something formal, so I tried my best to make it look that way, adding some traditional devices trying to make it have at least a little dignity. That plaque was for Jack Shales. The other plaque is for the friend of mine who invited me to the dinner (for the TWO plaques deal), so that I felt could be a bit light hearted, and that allowed the elephant to take over the design. (Though if you look at the official GOP elephants in the Jack Shales plaque, you will see I HAD to tweak the single elephant plaque to provide an acceptable design (and I would have loved to have inverted those up-side-down stars, but couldn't bring myself to do that, lest I not get an offer next year for another dinner (for TWO plaques).

So, while my plaques are not great, I do think I was able to make a lot of improvement by looking at what I originally had and realizing I had only put words on sheet that didn't really provide any sense of design. I think anyone such as myself who is not a graphic artist, can be helped by trying to look at their design and asking if it looks like a design or just a bunch of letters on a page.

My two cents worth, Chuck

PS: If anyone knows where I can get plain white vinyl floor tiles, let me know. Tiles come in all manner of weird appearances, but none of them are just plain white, or even plane light colors. If they are plane, they are usually very dark (but not black), and if they are light, they look mostly like 1960s designs with blotchy blobs in two or three shades of the same color. The tile used in this design is the closest I have found to white, and the fact that it had red and blue speckles in it helped with the GOP theme, but the yellow specs, well they didn't really help anything out!

[myxpykalix]

Chuck,
Thanks for your explanation. They didn't even promise me a free dinner, so you're ahead of the game. Let me ask because i can't tell, is that similar to the 1/8th" thick floor tiles that are like the peel and stick you put in the kitchen?

I can see how they might be more stable or flat but don't you have the risk of it curling up with warm temperatures?

I don't consider myself a graphic artist but i know what i like when i see it. What i tried to do was have a 3d relief combined with the vcarving. It would have been much easier to just vcarve this all but if i was going to do it, i wanted to do what I thought would be cool.

How did you paint the different colors? spray on and wipe off? I imagine the surface was easier to do something like that?

[twelchPTM]

made my buddy a plaque for the "Philadehia Flyers", didn't pick up on it untill after I sprayed 10 coats of laquer....

[Chuck Keysor]

Hello Jack. The floor tiles I used are vinyl, 1 foot square and 1/8th of an inch thick. They are not self-stick floor tiles. The self stick tiles I looked at were maybe 1/16th of an inch thick. In my testing, I concluded that 1/8th of an inch is as thin as I want to go.

They sell these tiles at any big box store. Locally we have Lowes, Home Depot and Menards. Menards sells these for 78 cents each, but they offer maybe 8 colors, all industrial ugly/1960s. We have a Habitat for Humanity store, called "ReStore" here in Elgin, and they have an ever changing supply of odd left over floor tiles for 25 cents each. Sometimes they are on sale for 10 cents each.

As to floppy, yes, they are floppy, depending upon their temperature. But that is what allows my pressure foot to hold them flat where the cutting is taking place. When I am done cutting and painting the plaque, I glue it onto a piece of 1/8th inch thick masonite or melamine. That makes the assembly thick, and gives a place to attach a hanger.

As to painting, it is just like any other V-carving. I used to wipe on, wipe off, but you have to seal the pores of the tile with wax, otherwise they take in paint that gets into the material causing issues. So I wax the tile before machining to seal the tile. After machining, comes the bad part, cleaning out the garbage residue vinyl dust, which requires LOTS of very tedious picking with an Xacto knife. (I have tried re-running the file a second time to clean out the grooves, and it doesn't help, or if it does, it is insignificant.) Then I apply the paint, latex for this method, and let it fully dry. Then I sand it all down.

My belief is that the wax and latex and sanding combination is best, is that with wiping to remove the paint, I have only had success with oil based paint. But the oil based paint would remove the wax that seals the pores, if you wiped it all around to remove it. So the latex and wax and sanding method, for me, keeps the tile pores clear and free from paint that would leave tints/ghosts in the finished plaque.

I haven't gotten into 3d carving yet. However, I expect you could carve a glued up piece of vinyl, and then glue that onto the tile plaque after the plaque had been finished otherwise.

Chuck

[geneb]

Have you thought about trying to laminate two 1/8" layers together to get wider and deeper lines? What about pre-sealing with shellac instead of wax?

Awesome looking results though!

g

[Chuck Keysor]

Hello Gene. Thanks!

It is funny that you should mention sealing with shellac, as about 20 minutes ago I did in fact seal for the first time with shellac. (Note, sealing is VITAL, as without it, paint gets into the pores of the tile, and it will not come out unless you sand so much that you start to ruin some of the fine lines.)

Yesterday, I cut a very intricate tile, that took 3 hours to carve. Then I spent 3 hours by hand picking the crud out of the lines (again, this was a highly detailed line drawing of an owl). I then painted with latex paint, and then this morning sanded it all down........ Well, it almost worked out fine, but one bird in the corner had some problems with its lines. I had of course already sanded this, so the wax was all gone. I did some touch up, without thinking, and wound up getting the paint into the pores. I spent another hour, trying to fix this, and resanding to get rid of the staining down into the pores. I finally gave up, and decided that despite all the time I had put into this, that I would have to scrap it. That is why I sealed this tile with shellac. Then the paints I apply to this, will be oil based, so I can wipe off the excess without sanding, thus not destroying my mask. I hate it when this happens..........:(

As to the laminating, I have thought of that, but wondered how well I could bond the tiles together. It seems like a vacuum press would be useful for that, but I don't have one. I just have an old vacuum pump I purchased for that purpose, but never got any further. Chuck

[geneb]

Have you considered using an Avery paint mask applied with a J roller?

As to laminating two tiles, you can make a pretty effective vacuum bag out of an ordinary garbage bag and some duct tape. Once you've got the bag sucked down, crimp the line with a C clamp and turn the pump off. I'm going to try to find some tiles at Lowes on the way home tonight. :)

g.