scottp55 wrote:VERY Nice Ted!!
Looks VERY deep...What was total depth, and where was the spot most in danger from the collet nut(before clearing)?
LIKING it!
scott
Total depth is 2.7 inches. The deepest place was along the eagle's throat. That was an issue because I had neglected to add a bit of taper and the software was cutting inwards towards the center at that point so all the material was still there. What I did was define an oval area around the throat so that it would cut from the inside out removing the step of material first.
My biggest challenge these days is painting. My first issue is that I get in too much of a hurry to see a project completed (aka the little boy syndrome). Second is prep, I am getting much better about that. Third is the type of paint. Latex is great to work with, fast drying, easy cleanup, etc, but I am starting to think that oil based paints produce better results.
The flag is made from big box pine that I made sure had dried out. I culled it for knots, ripped it to the 2.7 thickness, flattened both sides and then face glued it. Pine gets a bad rap all the time because it rots. That is both true and false. If you paint pine and then mount it so that water cannot be trapped on its surface it will last longer than most of us. So what I do is use standoffs on the backside so the water is not trapped between the sign and the building. I just use a couple of thin strips of white oak which is highly rot resistant in a vertical position. That way water is never trapped behind the sign. I sort of figured this out by looking where some adirondack chairs I built about twenty years ago had started to rot. Of course on the bottom of the legs from wicking water up and also wherever there were any places that water would get trapped, like where the back slats met the seat.
There are a couple of reasons I do not just use treated SYP. First is that the dust from it is downright unhealthy, secondly is that it sands lousy, third is that it is really fast growing which makes for huge grain that tends to splinter easily when cutting.
I am not in the mode of building monuments that future generations will "Oooo, and Ahhhhh!" More than likely whoever buys this place after they plant us will say "What is with that flag? It's gotta go!" or maybe not, in which case they can get out their paint brushes and give it another coat. I did use stainless steel screws to mount it so that they do not rust and run down the face of the flag.
"If you see a good fight, get in it." Dr. Vernon Jones