As mentioned a while back and in another post, it’s my good lady wife’s 50th birthday next month. Having booked out a very nice local bar for an evening to host her party she turned to decoration and asked me to make some marquee numbers for her. Research had shown these to be ridiculously expensive for what they are so of course I said I would.
Below is the kind of thing she wants (five and zero obviously…).
I sat with some squared graph paper and worked out a few options based on a height of around 120cm high and 70cm wide, then got Julie’s sign off.
After purchasing a couple of boards of 12mm ply I set to cutting it into 20cm wide strips for the outside ‘frame’. Had to tidy the workshop first…
I want to make a proper MFT style top with fixed hinge for the track saw for quick and accurate crosscuts but that’s for the future, in the meantime I made a small lashed up jig to enable me to just push the ply in, butt the track up against a couple of scraps and cut, getting accurate and repeatable cuts each time.
Here’s all the components cut to length and with the 45° bevels cut on each end, more about that in a second…
I started to glue up, starting at the top of the ‘5’ and pretty much immediately realised my error! All the angles in both digits are either 45/90° so that’s what I cut them at…d’oh!
Obviously this completely ballsed up my lengths because to cut them to the right angles I had to take more length off, which is fine but with angles on both ends and opposite sides cutting them all shorter messes the lengths up a bit.
Never mind, rather than get annoyed and spend ages working it out I just started on the zero knowing that all the cuts were on the same sides, meaning so long as matching components were all the same length then it would work out.
Here we are with the centre of the zero glued up and the outside in progress. Jules is obviously delighted that I’m using the warm kitchen table to glue up because the cold workshop isn’t conducive to the glue going off properly.
Hopefully the zero outer will be finished tomorrow then I’ll start on the five. The insides will be pallet wood and thanks to advice from Bob I’ll probably be going with pre-made festoon lights mounted into holes drilled.
The ply outer will be painted a pale cream then ‘distressed’ slightly with some sanding. Still a few weeks to get them finished so even at my glacial pace I should be able to not be on the last minute…
Below is the kind of thing she wants (five and zero obviously…).
I sat with some squared graph paper and worked out a few options based on a height of around 120cm high and 70cm wide, then got Julie’s sign off.
After purchasing a couple of boards of 12mm ply I set to cutting it into 20cm wide strips for the outside ‘frame’. Had to tidy the workshop first…
I want to make a proper MFT style top with fixed hinge for the track saw for quick and accurate crosscuts but that’s for the future, in the meantime I made a small lashed up jig to enable me to just push the ply in, butt the track up against a couple of scraps and cut, getting accurate and repeatable cuts each time.
Here’s all the components cut to length and with the 45° bevels cut on each end, more about that in a second…
I started to glue up, starting at the top of the ‘5’ and pretty much immediately realised my error! All the angles in both digits are either 45/90° so that’s what I cut them at…d’oh!
Obviously this completely ballsed up my lengths because to cut them to the right angles I had to take more length off, which is fine but with angles on both ends and opposite sides cutting them all shorter messes the lengths up a bit.
Never mind, rather than get annoyed and spend ages working it out I just started on the zero knowing that all the cuts were on the same sides, meaning so long as matching components were all the same length then it would work out.
Here we are with the centre of the zero glued up and the outside in progress. Jules is obviously delighted that I’m using the warm kitchen table to glue up because the cold workshop isn’t conducive to the glue going off properly.
Hopefully the zero outer will be finished tomorrow then I’ll start on the five. The insides will be pallet wood and thanks to advice from Bob I’ll probably be going with pre-made festoon lights mounted into holes drilled.
The ply outer will be painted a pale cream then ‘distressed’ slightly with some sanding. Still a few weeks to get them finished so even at my glacial pace I should be able to not be on the last minute…
