One of my fictive nephews recently earned the Arrow of Light award. He wanted some sort of a plaque to hang in his room, ideally incorporating some sort of shelf for displaying other awards. Nothing they could find ready-made was quite what he and his parents were after.
I whipped up a design for a layered plywood construction in Inkscape. Realizing I should probably get approval before proceeding, I also did a quick visualization in Fusion 360.
The back panel is 3 layers of 1/4” Baltic birch plywood, attached with wood glue. The main design is cut through the front layer with some additional details engraved in the corners. The back layer has cut outs for the mounting hardware so that it can hang flush against a wall.
The actual arrow will be added separately.
The shelf and support brackets are two layers of 1/4” Baltic Birch ply, connected with wood glue.
I had intended to make a mechanical connection between the bottom layer of the shelf and the plaque with counter-sunk wood screws, with the second layer of the shelf glued over them. Unfortunately, of the three sets of countersink bits I own, none seem to be anywhere reasonable. My guess, though, is that the wood glue is likely sufficient.
I really haven’t done a lot of woodworking and, I am sure this could be better. Glue squeeze-out seems to be a problem with this sort of thing, leaving residue that I cannot always remove with sanding. This was also my first ever adventure with edge banding.
Still, these things seem to trend a little rustic and, I think it came out decent.
They want to stain it themselves. So, I left it unfinished.
Visualization:
Photos of finished project:
A few more images and similar write-up on my Evermore Studio studio blog.
The design files are in the Free Files section, if you want to make one.
