As usual, I was presented with a last minute Christmas gift creation this year. When a family of 6 is passionate about their Chicago Blackhawks, what do you get them for Christmas? Autographed pictures? Hockey pucks from scoring a goal? Season tickets? I guess that stuff is too clichè, which is why she came to me for ideas. So I came up with this…..a 12”x24” custom personalized plaque made of plywood. Letters and Blackhawk head are separate elements that are somewhat recessed into the plywood. Take a look!

Concept images created in Cinema 4D.

Rustoleum’s “Poppy Red” spray paint on plywood.

The back side of the 3/4″ plywood blank has a 45º bevel.

1/2″ plywood laminated with 1/8″ styrene is the base for the characters.

Characters are cut using a 1/8″ endmill router bit on the CNC.

Finished characters!

Using the same 1/8″ router bit, I cut a profile path for the characters that were previously cut.

The profile cut of each character is set to 0.25″.

I cut the outside profile of each character deeper than the rest because I’ve found that it minimizes tearout in the plywood. It also gives a little bit more depth to the cavity behind each character.

Looks good!

Looks good!

At this point, I’ve applied paint mask over the red surface so that I protect it from the black paint that is applied to each character cavity.

Progress…

Progress…

Progress…

Sooooo at some point, I must have dropped something right in the middle of the work piece….it looks worse than it actually is but it’ll still require a little bit of work to fix….

A little bit of wet sanding and more paint and we’ll be good as new!

The stripes at the bottom of the plaque have been painted and we’re just about finished!

The Blackhawk head is a custom sticker that I created just for this project.

Hmmm…..why didn’t I just paint the entire cavity black?…..

I positioned pieces of tape in the character cavities as a mask to keep spray paint out. Because I glued the characters to the sign blank, I wanted to make sure that I had a nice, secure hold onto an unpainted surface.

Finished!

Finished!

Can’t forget my logo, website and date!