Carved Signs

Here a few carved signs we’ve done over the year. We started in the early 2000’s with a chisel and a hammer. It didn’t take long for us to invest in a hand held electric router ($15 at a garage sale). Fast forward 10 years and now we do most of our carved signs with a 3-axis CNC router. It’s fast, accurate, and we can actually be more creative with it.

First the signs are designed in Adobe Illustrator and then the 3D CAD modeling happens in Vectric Aspire. When the tools paths are created they are sent from the PC to the router and the magic begins.

Our two most common material to carve are Western Red Cedar and High Density Urethane (HDU). Cedar is great when the customer wants to leave some natural wood exposed (clear coated or transparent stain) and HDU is a better choice if the entire sign will be painted. HDU is more stable and less prone to expanding and contracting and checking.

Enjoy browsing the following images!