Custom Fire Rescue Marshal Plaque: Poplar
This custom fire rescue marshal plaque was made using Poplar hardwood, with a mix of manual, power and CNC tooling to turn it into reality based on the customer’s specs.
The start of this custom fire rescue marshal plaque begins at CNCROi.com as a live edge plank of Poplar, kiln dried and ready to be turned into a beautiful wall display!
Before a plaque can be made out of this Poplar, it needs to be laminated, this adds a lot of strength and greatly reduces the ability of the wood to warp over time.
Cutting it into sticks requires a perfect seam as well for the optimal glue-up, as a result, I used my Thermwood CNC router to make sure all the sticks were flat, perpendicular and by default, perfectly square at CNCROi.com.
The CNC router does a wonderful job making the sticks of Poplar hardwood perfect for a glue-up, even more accurate and precise than I could achieve using any of my wood planners at CNCROi.com.
Clamping wood together to produce the blank that will then become the custom fire rescue marshal plaque is a wonderful ability that CNCROi.com has in-house, it gives us absolute control as to the finished product specs.
I’ve designed and fabricated many items in the “fire industry” including kids toys that I use to design before I started CNCROi.com.
I prefer to use too much glue than not enough when it comes to making laminated glue-ups of just about any wood species, I can always shave off the excess glue, but adding glue after the fact or having a blank break apart is a disaster.
I generally allow the laminated wood to dry over the course of a few days before routering it flat and parallel on both sides, this assures that even the glue INSIDE the custom fire rescue marshal plaque is as dry as the glue on the outside.
This Poplar hardwood goes through quite a transformation, as you can see, the excess glue has no bearing on the finished blank, it’s all shaved off and the seam is hard to see as the clamps squished everything dry over the glueing process.
Straight engraving of a traditional plaque can be done with our laser as well as our router, though that would require paint filling.
Of course, there are two sides to this laminated board of Poplar, what I shaved flat and parallel before making the glue-up were the sides that I used my tablesaw at CNCROi.com to cut into sticks, thus, the original surfaces front and back of the live edge Poplar are the only “original” piece of the board left.
This process flattens and makes the entire custom fire rescue marshal plaque blank parallel as well, as the table of my CNC router is flat, square and parallel to the head… it’s really an efficient production method I’ve developed through the years for projects such as this.
Poplar is a wonderful wood for this project because it doesn’t weight a ton, which is good for something that goes on the wall, and produces wonderful contrast when laser engraved.
The nice thing about metal is that it can be painted to any color you want, it’s relatively lightweight and incredibly durable for outdoor use as well as indoor.
Above is the digital version of what I’m making below using my CNCROi.com router, this generates the code for my Thermwod to go ahead and carve the custom fire rescue marshal plaque out.
There is of course, lots of sawdust produced from the initial cutting of the live edge board to the finished custom fire rescue marshal plaque, so although I started off with plenty of wood, little by little, it’s shaved all around to be just the perfect size.
The reason why multiple platforms can be used for one project is possible is because they all have the same level of precision, the error only happens when somebody (me), moves it in any way at CNCROi.com.
If you want a something made out of metal instead of wood, we can make that for you as well to just about any size.
Carving out the inner line before proceeding to cutting out the entire custom fire rescue marshal plaque allows for absolute precision, because nothing is allowed to move, if I were to cut it out first then somehow try to align it to carve the inner pocket, there’s no way I’d get things anywhere near this precise.
After a little rough sanding to make sure there were no fuzzies that coule interfear with the laser engraving process, I put the custom fire rescue marshal plaque into our laser and that process, after about 10 minutes of making sure everything was perfectly aligned, to begin the engraving process.
Laser engraving at CNCROi.com does two main things, first, it creates depth so that I can sand the top surface to a wonderful smooth finish without moving the engraving and secondly, it creates contrast, by making charcoal, that will not fade, crack or peel over time.
As with the router, there is an overhead gantry doing all the hard work, after I’m done the programming, it’s up to the laser to do as it’s told until the entire engraving process is complete.
Plaques can be made any size, shape or any material, traditional or ornamental, CNCROi.com can make it happen.
Laser engraving looks great but it creates a lot of soot on the surface, so that needs to be sanded off before applying a few coats of tung oil to seal the wood and create more contrast on it.
It’s an incredible tranformation that takes place sanding the wood, it looks AMAZING!
A few layers of tung oil make the custom fire rescue marshal plaque look complete, it’s soft to the touch, permanently branded with the information provided by the customer and best of all, not so heavy that you need to be a bodybuilder to lift it!
Need a custom fire rescue marshal plaque? Contact us right now at CNCROi.com!