Sandal Novelty Plaque: Solid Oak
A sandal novelty plaque wasn’t something I ever imagined I’d be making in my wildest dreams but what the client wants, they get… and it ended-up being a very interesting job using solid oak.
Before any work can start on this sandal novelty plaque, the first thing we need to do at CNCROi.com is measure out the sandal and do a rough sketch right on the piece of solid oak to make sure everything would roughly fit and what orientation was best.
Do keep in mind that this is wood provided by the client, it was neither flat nor square so my job was to remove the material using my CNC router and their job was to finish it off in the woodshop.
The first part of this job was carving out the actual sandal area of the sandal novelty plaque which will be filled with epoxy resin by the customer, CNCROi.com used a 3/8″ bit to remove material as quickly and cleanly as possible.
I believe this sandal novelty plaque Oak was about 2″ thick and we went down 1.75″ – remember, this cavity will be filled with resin which will re-strengthen the area.
If you want something extensively carved throughout, CNCROi.com also has that capability in house.
As it’s a lot of material being removed, it was done in several passes, each going down an additional half inch deep until the entire depth is achieved – the results might look a little rough but again, the customer wanted to finish the plaque themselves, with me only doing the roughing of the elements.
I’m always impressed by how much material explodes out of a carving process, all the tight wood grain is liberated and given a bit of air, this makes this sandal novelty plaque interesting to me, it’s trying to estimate what the final product will look like during the actual production process at CNCROi.com.
When it comes to making custom novelty plaques, they can be of any size, shape, material or design profile, there are no limits with CNCROi.com when it comes to making the unique piece just for you.
Of course, if you are more of a metal person than a wood fanatic, we can make awesome work in that material too with the same design flexibility.
Additionally, any quantity can also be produced, if you wanted 1 sandal novelty plaque like this one or 100 but all the same or different, no problem for CNCROi.com.
You can see just how much material is removed, it will never fit back in as now the chips have form and air pushed into them so they’ve expanded greatly.
Although in a production setting, I’d just go right to the other bit without requiring any clean-up (the router has no eyes so it doesn’t care what it sees or doesn’t), for video and photographic purposes, I blew off the dust and wood chips created in the excavating of the actual place the sandal will go in just to show you the depth.
Although most of the wood we process at CNCROi.com is Pine, it doesn’t limit your design options going with a softwood vs a hardwood.
The next step is actually changing the bit to a 1/8″ that will then proceed to carve out the wording that will go on said sandal novelty plaque.
The advantage of using a bit for carving, especially into this very hard Oak, over laser engraving, is that it’s faster and thus far more cost-effective and the depth is the same across the board.
In this case, this piece of wood was neither flat nor square, so I had to do another pass at the other end a little deeper, this is why generally at CNCROi.com, I like to use my own wood, flatten it myself and make it parallel, makes for better results but this piece of wood had some sentimental value.
Literally any type of wood can be transformed into something very interesting by CNCROi.com.
The carving of the lettering is basically the same process as the sandal carving earlier, just remove the material, in this case, quarter inch, this lettering will be epoxy filled by the customer as well.
Throughout the carving process of this sandal novelty plaque, you can see the accumulation of wood chips all around the machine, I often tell people I didn’t buy a CNC router, I bought a CNC wood chipper.
In this picture below, you can see how the height was really different in the top right corner vs the bottom of this board, so I decided to do another pass far deeper to compensate at CNCROi.com.
Just to give you an idea of design flexibility when it comes to wood, we can make your plaque look like the state it’s destined for!
The bit has no problem carving into this hard Oak, it’s incredibly dry and weathered, so the chips almost make themselves.
After the last bunch of letters are made, you can get a better representation of what the finished sandal novelty plaque will look like – again, the customer is finishing this themselves so it will look vastly better than what left the shop.
Plaques can be literally made out of anything to resemble anything you want, it’s amazing just how much can be created and expressed on a simple plaque made by CNCROi.com.
Here’s the sandal novelty plaque without a sandal in it so you can get an idea of the joke and the layout of this project.
And of the sandal in the plaque as well, it will be cast in clear epoxy resin and the letters will be epoxied black, should look amazing and the epoxy should make the sandal look nice and shiny as well.
A quick little clean-up and you can get a better idea of the overall job, was an interesting one and the first plaque I ever make at CNCROi.com involving an epoxied sandal.
Need a custom novelty plaque? Contact CNCROi.com right now!