When using chisels without a hammer you wiggle the blade into the cut at an angle, this helps the blade slice through, for a little more persuadation you can use a wooden mallet lightly.
Freehand Sign Writing Using A Router
Creating your own signs from wood can save you some money and can be enjoyable to make, whether its a business sign or a house name following our guide will inform you on how to route your own professional looking sign.
Choosing your wood is important, hardwoods with a close grain are a great choose but if your using softwood then we would recommend you make the letters as large as you can.
the reason behind doing these signs freehand is because the letters will be raised, using a router jig for this would limit us to only one size, letter spacing would be to far apart and your limited to which font, making a jig your self would take to long and probably will only be used once.
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Marking out
The first stage is to choose your font and size.
All Windows based computers come with a programme called WordPad which will allow you to type your text and view it in an array of sizes and font types.
Once you have chosen your styling send the document to print.
If there is multiple pages then simply tape them together on the top side.
Lay some carbon paper over the wood then position your text and tape down, using a pencil draw around your lettering, this will transfer the carbon to your work piece.
Once you remove your lettering and carbon paper draw around the carbon marks on your work piece with a pencil to insure the marking are still there is the carbon gets mudded.
Making The Cut
Using a kraft knife score around your lettering as neatly as you can, cutting the top fibres of the wood about 2-3mm deep. This makes getting the letters neat later easier.
Now install a flute cutter into your router, we have used a 3mm 1/4 shank flute cutter in a Flu 96E router but for this job the smaller the better, bigger heavier routers will only impede you. The cutter you use maybe larger it just depends on the scale of the lettering.
Set the router to cut 2-3mm deep, lower the cutter into the wood away from the lettering, now routing out in a small clockwise sweeping action get closer to your lettering and you will see the wood start to peal away from where you scored with the knife, following the outline of your lettering keeping to about a 5-10mm trench width.
Don't worry about the places the cutter can't get to just yet as we will need to switch tools to remove this bits.
Once all the letters are outlined set your router to the final depth and repeat what you just did, every time you get closer to the letter you will see the wood peal away keeping the edge of the letter nice and tidy.
Once this is done you can change the router cutter to a larger one and remove the rest of the material, make sure there is always material supporting both sides of the router base otherwise the cutter will sink into the wood deeper then required.
Now to get into the tighter places where the router bit couldn't you can use the craft knife to cut out the material and even chisels.
If your not able to use sand paper to smooth down the material then you can use a Cabinet scraper chisel or craft knife blades, blade end down to the material.
Once your happy you can continue to finish the piece however you require.
With Credit to our forum member Mailee - Thank You!
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