Customizing an existing D&C house sign

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tmerrill
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Customizing an existing D&C house sign

Post by tmerrill »

One of the additional resources that James (VectorArt3D) has available free of charge for Design and Carve customers is a Duck themed house sign. The first picture shows the toolpath preview and as downloaded it is ready to machine, if your name is Smith :D. Part of this post will be how to change the name and design to what you need.

When James decided to include this design in the samples for the recent AFWS show, he eliminated the larger duck and we decided to carve the duck out of a different wood to provide some additional contrast and depth. The other change I made was to veneer the blank surface with walnut and carve both the name and upper design through the walnut, again to provide contrast. The completed sign is shown in the second picture and was displayed at AFWS.

When a friend of mine saw the pictures of the AFWS sign he asked me to make him one, with his last name of course. He also had a beautiful piece of walnut burl veneer set aside for a special use and decided this was it. The completed sign is shown in the third picture.

Should you want to make this design with a different name, the steps are fairly straight forward. It isn't just as simple as changing the text because if you look closely, the bottom of the 3D design follows the shape of the top of the text.

Here are the steps I used:

1. Delete the existing text and use node editing to delete the bottom vectors that create the bottom borders of the left and right 3D designs. See picture 4.

2. Type your new text and select the font you want. Size the text to look good visually.

3. Select the text and use the Offset tool to offset outwards by an amount that forms a pleasing curved shape above the text. This will probably take some trial and error, so try something and if it doesn't look good, undo and try another offset value. See Picture 5.

4. When happy, use the Trim tool and/or node editing to join the offset vector from the text to the left and right vectors that define the 3D area. You can also see how I slightly modified the new vectors to appear a little smoother and allow good bit access. See picture 6.

Some other comments:

1. You can easily v-carve the text, but with the veneer I decided to do a shallow pocket through the veneer to get the lighter core wood to provide the contrast for the text.
2. Before people start losing sleep over the apostrophe, my friend was presented with the options and liked the look of the sign as completed. Didn't bother me at all.

Any questions, please ask.

Tim
Attachments
1 Duck sign.jpg
2 AFWS version.jpg
3 Joe's sign done sm.jpg
4 Bottoms of 3D areas removed.JPG
5 Offset vectors.JPG
6 Offset vectors and final shapes.JPG

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Turtle49
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Re: Customizing an existing D&C house sign

Post by Turtle49 »

Very nice Tim!
:)
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Re: Customizing an existing D&C house sign

Post by Hunterland »

Thanks Tim I went to the site but did not find the file. would it be posible to post a link ? Don

tmerrill
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Re: Customizing an existing D&C house sign

Post by tmerrill »

Hi Don,

Go to the new Design and Carve website (http://www.designandcarve.com/), select My Account at the top and login. Then you should see a list of options that includes "Customer Resources." Click on this and it will open a page with a selection of additional models and designs available to download.

If you have any problems along the way, you will need to contact James for help: info@designandcarve.com

Tim

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Re: Customizing an existing D&C house sign

Post by Hunterland »

Thanks Tim It went well Don

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Re: Customizing an existing D&C house sign

Post by mezalick »

Something very appealing about this.
Nice work Tim.
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Re: Customizing an existing D&C house sign

Post by Timvmax »

Nice work as usual Tim, and great information.
When you carved the larger Duck, did you make it as a seperate piece, then fix it on top?
Tim.

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Re: Customizing an existing D&C house sign

Post by tmerrill »

Thanks all.

Hi Tim,

Yes, the duck was machined separately and then glued into a shallow pocket to help with alignment while the glue dried and also provide some additional strength to the leg's. I used the Auto Inlay tool to calculate both the cutout toolpath for the duck and inlay pocket in the base.

Tim
Attachments
Duck inlay.jpg
Pocket for duck.jpg

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