Deer Prudence

Sometimes you win a job that starts the blood flowing with anticipation. This particular project did just that. Shannon Reinert, ST‘s senior associate editor, called me about producing a sign for her subdivision. Honestly, my first sobering thought was, "I’d better do my best work for this sign, because tens of thousands of signmakers and sign designers will read this."

I met with Shannon at her subdivision, and we looked at the wall where she wanted the sign installed. We decided on a size — 27 in. x 4 ft. — and I left to start on the design. Given its name, Deer Ridge, it wasn’t difficult to develop graphics. Using clip art depicting a deer, I concocted my design. I e-mailed Shannon a few ideas and after some serious critiquing from ST‘s experts, we agreed on a design and colors.

Fabrication

First, we glued together our Western red-cedar panels to the desired size. Because we shape most of our sign blanks on our Cam Tech Spacemaker CNC router table, we typically add 2 in. to our blank’s height and length. I did this to compensate for the bit’s 1/2-in. diameter.

We edge-cut the boards with our 10-in. table saw and laid them out for gluing. We use Titebond 2 premium wood glue to fabricate all our cedar blanks. We glued them together and bar clamped the panel to our workbench overnight to ensure good adhesion.

We mounted the boards on our router table, and we devised the sign’s shape using ArtCam’s Insignia