sign making template questions

[linear]

Since the Millscraft sign comes with basic letters, can fancier letters be purchased later?

Not that I know of, however....

I devoted some CPU cycles to thinking about how you could arrive at a DIY set of templates. The critical dimension is the "stroke width" of the letters has to equal the bushing O.D, plus a little slop. The provided templates have a lot of slop, actually.

If you took your favorite drawing program and used the paintbrush tool set to the correct width to get a uniform stroke width on your letters, you could print a pattern for cutting your own templates in say acrylic using a scrollsaw. But you could also freehand that font into the board and save a few steps along the way unless you were running off a batch for your neighbors or whatever.

I like giving signs out as gifts, people like getting them. you guys know I love to shop the cull bin, and anything wider than 3" in there that's cedar and reasonably knot-free gets grabbed for the sign-makin' stockpile.

[ragswl4]

I have the Milescraft one and its okay. The issues that I have is if your making a sign that is smaller then the kit is setup for. When this happens there is nothing to clamp the kit to.

To paint inside is pretty easy. Before you route the sign, finish the sign entirely. Then once dry apply painters tape and route. Now you can just paint the inside of the letters. Then remove and your done.

I made a sign using this method for my son, and get lots of compliments on it.

Great Idea! Thanks for sharing, no more painful hand painting the letters for me. It was always a hassle painting the letters first then trying to paint the rest without messing up the letters or vice versa.

[JimD]

I made a large sign for a church we used to belong to with lettering and a symbol - it was a Christian and Missonary Alliance church and I put their logo on it. All I did was to cut a piece of luan plywood the size of the sign, then I drew the letters on it using a lettering template and drew the logo. Then I cut out the letters and logo with my Bosch jig saw and a fine toothed blade. I put a template guide on the router with a straight bit and routed out the letters and logo. I had to brad nail pieces of the off cut in place for some of the shapes but it was pretty simple.

I would not use this method to do a whole lot of signs but for a few, I think it works very well. It limits you in shapes only to what you can either draw or find in a lettering guide. I did both sides of some 2X pressure treated wood I glued together to make up the sign blank.

Jim

[Tom Slick]

The way Nahm did lettering freehand looked fairly easy and very professional. It made me decide to pass on buying a template. Ihave yet to actually try it though.

[os1kne]

I have the Milescraft kit and it works pretty well for me...but there is an old guy around here that sets up a booth at county fairs, etc. that does a much better job freehand using a beat up old PC100 router. I can't work a pencil as well as he can work that router. I suspect that a trim router would work great for freehand sign routing with some practice.