One of my surgical colleagues had seen the signs I made for my clinical group and my wife’s hospital and asked if I could make one for his home brewery. I have made him custom bottle caddies in the past (in free-designs) so I already had his logo:
Luckily still had some poplar 1x12 (and luckily had enough for more than one sign as it turned out).
So here is the sign right off the x-carve right after completion (penny for scale):
Amazingly they managed to break it in “shipping” (mind you he lives around 2mi from me)
So he tried to glue it (it sheared on a grain line), so I remade it (that’s easy enough with CNCs) but then realized to make it not break again, I needed to reinforce it, (but I couldn’t just put something across the “toe” as the sign wouldn’t be flush, so I put some 1/8" plywood on the machine and cut that out (in 2 halves as I wanted to engrave my logo onto the back with the glowforge) and that sign is 8" wider than the GF’s bed. So that cut beautifully with a 1/16" end-mill in a few minutes. Engraved my logo in via the GF and then cut a horizontal keyhole for hanging. (for those unfamiliar a horizontal one has the huge advantage of allowing the user to slide sideways to get balance, whereas with a vertical one you are locked to that balance. With a weird object like this it’s almost impossible to calculate the center of gravity…
I realize I could have also pocketed the back of the toe and poured epoxy in to strengthen it, but this was way quicker to be honest. and less chance of pocketing an irregular shape and cutting through a side.
Oh, and in addition I ended up adding a .75" V-carved star where his hometown is (near Naples)
The hospital kind of frowns on staff getting together outside of work to contain outbreaks. The hospital across the street has a cluster right now, so they are being very strict.
I think in the future I might just make signs like this pre-sandwiched. As in if it is a super fragile sign (like this one was) based on the design, just glue the ply on the back before starting, That way it’s not an after the fact alignment challenge.
