Freehand routing

Hahahaha,,, sadly, the ol'vette could use a bit of routing,, but I have not had time to get to it, Randy. It was just the closest thing to the house that I saw to lean the signs against to take the pictures ,,, so it got used.

Glenn, I got the image on the wood by using carbon paper under a sign that my buddy had made at a sign shop, out of vinyl, that you would stick on the side of your truck or wall or what ever. I just laid it on top of the wood slab and put carbon paper under the vinyl sign and outlined the letters and eagle with a pencil. If you look closely at the picture,, you can see the outlines made by the pencil, on the blue letters of the vinyl. So when you take up the vinyl and carbon paper,, you have the outline in dark lines on the wood,,,, and the rest is easy,,,, just rout out what you do not want,,,
I made a blanket chest for a christmas present last year,, and I routed out the scripted letter H on the front side of it. I used the other method of using an Opaque Projector to shoot the image of the "H" on the front pannel of the chest, When you get it to the right size you want, by moving the projector closer or farther away from the chest,, just outline the image you are projecting on the pannel, with a pencil, When you turn off the projector,, you are left with an outline of what ever you were projecting on that pannel. It works fantastic..
And with those small routers,,, they are so easy to hold and contrlol with that larger base plate with the dowels at the edges, you will be amazed at just how much they will actually do. Also, the dowels at the edges,, keep your fingers a LONG way from the cutters, so not much chance of an accident between your fingers and the router bits. And like I said,, if you buy them from Harbor Freight,,, they are so doggone cheap,,, I just buy several of them and just leave the different profile bits in them so I do not have to change them ,, just pick up a different router and carry on with the sign.. But they are noisy little buggers,, so ear muffs are a good idea.

Dont worry, Randy,, I took it with the sense of humor it was ment,,,
Try making a simple sign like that and you will be ready to take on the world then in making signs,,, It is Sooooooooo easy once you finnish your first sign you'll have all the confidence ya will ever need then.
I took a few classes at work in the art of wood carving,,, we used Fordom tools,, ( where the electric motor hangs on a stand and the power is transmitted through a cable to the hand peice) It was a fish carving class and I never done that before,,,, once the instructor showed us the secrets to carving,,,, we each amazed ourself with what we produced,,,, the first fish I did was a rain bow trout,,, then we did a blue gill,, and the last one I did was a perch,,, all the fish came out better then I believed I could ever do,,, but you could see the improvments with each fish... I was carrying the last one to the car after the class was over and walked by a guy in the hall way,,,,, he took a look at the fish and was only about 2 feet away from it,,, and ask me,,, " Where did ya catch it"? and he ment it !!! hahahah He would not believe it was a peice of wood !!
I told you this story just to say that I think if you utilized that craft also in these wood signs,,,,, you would make some signs that would not be believed,,,,, like that one I made with the eagle off to the side,,,, if you took the time to carve in the feathers and details of the eyes and beak all in relief...
I bet once you displayed them ,,, you could actually make a good living off those signs,,

Randy, the base I made for the trim routers,,, is just a scrap peice of plexiglass,,, I have a couple of sizes mounted to a couple of small routers.... of course... if ya make larger base plates.. then you can make larger signs,,, its all about how far you can span with the router, still being supported on all sides or at least most sides so it will not tip and gouge into the sign,, which does tend to tick ya off then,, I would not make it any smaller then maybe 9 inches square... and if ya can go larger,, its better,,,
I use a solid carbide 2 flute, ball nose, end mill for the routing close to the letters or image,, and switch to a flat bottom router bit of maybe 3/8's diameter and some times even a 1/2 inch diameter flat bottom bit to clear larger areas that are NOT near the letters or images.. but you have to be careful when you start to use larger diameter bits because they start to get a bit grabby so you have to be on your guard to not let the router get away from you and rip into wood you DO NOT want to remove.
I use ball nose end mills because they have a nice spiral to the flutes and they slice out the wood maybe a bit easier then the straight flutes of regular router bits .. You can find web sites that deal in metal cutting end mills and I think you can buy them quite cheaply compaired to Router bits,,,, especially if you go with just high speed steal mills instead of solid carbide. I have not had to buy these end mills ( 1/4 inch ) ,, because I ,,, ah have a supplier of them,,, hehehe that we will not talk about here,,, hahahah
But I have bought 1/2 inch ball nosed end mills that are a full 1/2 inch diameter the full lenght, and I have stuck them in my larger routers that will accept half inch shank bits.. and they work fine. And they are NOT carbide.... just high speed steel,, and I think I only paid about something like $4 or so each for them,,, new ... but they are made in china or some where... compair them to 1/2 inch shank core box bits,, ( I think they are called,,,in router lingo )... and you have saved quite a bit.
The only draw back to using ball nosed bits are that you are cutting a radius groove,,, so you end up with a lot of going back over and over trying to knock down all the little peaks you are leaving on the bottom of the sign. Thats why I switch to the flat bottom bits because they cut a Flat bottom,,, just make sure its set to EXACTLY the same depth of cut as the ball nose was cutting and they do a great job cleaning up the bottom of the sign.
Harbor Freight is gonna sell some trim routers now I can see that,,, hahahah

I have been taking some air brush classes at work and the instructor recomended buying a 2 stage air brush,,, he told the students that you can buy a particular air brush at a hobby shop down the road,,, a few of them ran out and got the thing at the hobby shop... I looked in the HF.catalog and low and behold,,, there it was,,, same exact one the hobby shop was selling,,
only thing that was different was they paid the hobby shop a shade over a hundred bucks for theirs,, and my credit card was charged,, $42 for mine,,, From HF. As you can tell,,, I love the place...

One thing that just popped into my mellon,, and it could come in handy for anyone that is going to do the freehand routing,,, Even if you do have a laps of concentration and let the router bite into wood you did not want to remove,, don't be upset too much, because they can be fixed easily,, I will repost this picture so you can see where to look for my repair, I was happily routing away and all of a sudden I realised I took off some wood I did not mean to remove,,, I was half way done with the sign and was sick,,, thought I would either have to toss the sign and start over from scratch, or convince her to change her name. Then I thought oh well,,, got nothing to loose anyway ,,, so I just changed to the flat bottom bit and cleared away half of the letter,,, maybe I should have done the whole letter, but I was not thinking that fast,,, as usual. Anyway all I did was glue another peice of wood on the newly flatened area of the sign and redrew my letter and then routed the wood away again,,,,, it worked beautiful,, except I did not take the time to find a peice of wood with the same shade of wood,,,, but so far nobody has noticed,

But if you look on the bottom sign, and look at the middle of her name, you can see the front side of the letter A is slightly different color,. That is the patch I glued in. If the sign had been painted instead of stained,,, you would never have known about it.

So you see,,, even if you Do screw up,,, you can usually fix it with no problems,, so try it,,, its easy.