I don't know jack…

We aren't afraid to admit when we don't know something. We also aren't afraid to develop new skills.

So when we decided we wanted to add the service of making “3D Signs” to the business, we knew we needed to practice. We did not want to find a local business so our first attempt at making a 3D sign would butcher their beloved logo … and neither did we want to use ours. It will be next, of course. So we made up the business “Jack's Bar and Restaurant.”

This logo was HEAVILY inspired by our favorite local dive “Perry's Bar and Cocktail Lounge” in Odenton, MD. If you go, you have to try the Gyro tacos.

So we made this logo quickly and decided to cut it out on the Laguna 150w CO2 laser, which this project would have been much more difficult without. We cut it out of 1/4” big box store plywood. Our first mistake, but we had some scraps laying around … as we always do. The Laguna cut them out great with 15mm/sec at 80% power. We initially had it set to 20mm/sec but that couldn't quite get thru the various patches in the lower grade wood. We used some mineral spirits to clean the pieces from the laser. We need to do more tests and research to see if that's really the best method.

We used some years old sandable primer from the flammables cabinet to build it up some and remove most of the wood grain. Then we hit it with some 400grit sandpaper (very carefully) to smooth it out even more. Then, once again, some years old rattle can paint. The colors for the logo were chosen simply because we had them.

Now for the next mistake, we should have sanded them off again to smoothen the paint, but we were getting impatient. We layed out all the pieces (a projector would have worked wonders here to help us line everything up) then used some Starbound CVA glue and accelerator to glue them down.

We call this the “15ft sign” because it looks great from about 15’ away. We learned a lot from this little side project while we waited for materials for our other projects.

So for pricing, this took about 5hrs of labor and maybe $60 in materials. We figure a sign about this would run $350, but there is definitely a lot of room of improvement for efficiency. And we are extremely confident the next will be much better.

We have plans to make a unpainted wood sign using various types of wood to get the contrast, and probably using the AvidCNC Pro6060 for most of the work. That type of sign would be much more expensive, but have a great look, and it's working with materials and methods we are more familiar with.

We'd like to offer different levels of signs to our customers. For example this would be the budget sign, then an intermediate, then an expensive sign, then a “Call for pricing” option. We look forward to making them all!

Thanks for reading!