Making a 9 Color Sign | ToolsToday

Making a 9 color sign for my daughter's room using Amana Tool® CNC Router Bits and STEPCRAFT M.700 CNC machine available on our website.

Matt from ToolsToday used the 90° V-Groove insert carbide router bit no. RC-45711 to make very clean cuts through the Oramask 813 into the wood. The bit carves through the mask perfectly leaving no cleanup work, especially with the cleanup pass built into the @vectricltd software. Oramask 813 was applied to the piece before it was carved each time. Painted with General Finishes Sunglow Milk Paint, it dries quickly and limits any bleeding. Finished with Helmsman Sparurethane. 

Music: One Last Breath by ikoliks on Artlist.io
ToolsToday provided product.

Feed, Speed, Chip Load & Step Down CNC Running Parameters

Amana Tool In-Tech™ Series Insert Carbide V Groove 90 Deg x 11/16 D x 1/4 Inch SHK Single Flute Router Bit no. RC-45711
RPM: 18,000
Feed Rate: 35ipm
Plunge Rate: 17.5ipm
Max Depth of Cut: 0.25"

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:

Matt: Starting on a new project here, and I'm sticking it down to the Stepcraft M.700 CNC machine, getting it all stuck down and pushed down into place and then applying some Oramask over the top of it. This is Oramask 813 and that's going to protect the wood from all of the different paints. So, I'm gonna have nine different colors on this piece in total. And this is just one of the layers of masking that we'll be using. This is the RC-45711 90-degree V insert bit and it carves super clean through the Solid Cherry and the mask, leaving a really nice area to apply the paint. So, we're going to be carving a sandwich design into this. And like I said, it's going to have nine different colors total on the entire sign.

So, I'm using General Finishes Milk paint for all of this. We do sell the milk paint on our website. It's a fantastic paint for doing any sort of sign work like this. It's a lot thicker, so you don't need to seal the grain before actually painting anything, which is really, really nice. So, the other nice thing about it is that its water based. So, I'm just using a damp cloth to go ahead and remove the excess paint all over the mask. So that way we get a clean contact area for the next layer of masking. With that all cleaned up, I will get the next layer put down. And I gotta make sure that I cover up all those areas that came up a little bit short there.

So, all of these letters are going to be a little bit further apart. I actually made a mistake in painting that I there yellow that shouldn't have been yellow. But anyways, we're going through and carving out all of the letters. And I'll do a little bit different technique there to hide or to make sure that I don't paint the areas that I don't want. But these areas, as you can see are super thin and it would be really difficult, especially with my heavy-handed painting. If you love this type of content, be sure to subscribe to our channel and go ahead and hit that bell so that you'll be notified on all of the new videos when they're released. Also, don't forget to follow us on Instagram @toolstoday

So, using the emerald and then this is the yellow. You can see, I labeled all the colors there to make sure that I put the colors in the right areas. So, we'll just use the blue tape to separate those letters and then paint. All of this again is the General Finishes Milk Paint. It's definitely my go to paint for any sort of sign work like this. Get the next layer of masking put down and then carve out the next layer of the sandwich. These are going to be the tomatoes. So those will be painted red. You can see how well the bit picks up all of the really fine details there as well. So, I'm painting the letters in order with the colors that I'm using on the actual sandwich as well, to make things a little bit easier and keep the paint brushes consistent with what color I'm using.

Get the next layer of masking put down. This is going to be the ham portion of the sandwich. Caity absolutely loves playing sandwich or playing in her kitchen and making sandwiches especially for my wife and I. So, these are the types of sandwiches that she makes. So, I thought it would be really cool. So, this is where things started to go wrong. Basically, I ended up making the design a little bit too tight of tolerance. And as you can see, I didn't leave enough holding wood for that mask. So, the masking started to pull up as I'm going through the carve. This is about the point that I started freaking out about it. But luckily, we have a fantastic team here at ToolsToday and they definitely helped with figuring out a solution for this.

So, as you can see there, basically the issue is that I left not enough gap in the design to hold the Oramask or give the Oramask something to hold down to. So, I won't be able to paint this because it would go right into all of the other areas I'm not good enough with a paintbrush. So, the ToolsToday team helped me come up with a much better solution. And that is to use colored pencil. This is easier to do, easier to get into all of those different areas. And it worked absolutely fantastically. So really happy to have that. And then we can get the mask all pulled off and it pulls off really easily. I am using a hook weeding tool to get into all of those smaller areas. We do sell that on our website as well.

It just helps and make sure that you don't damage the paint or the wood itself. So, we got all of that pulled up. And I'm really happy with the way that this turned out at this point. I definitely didn't expect it to go that well with the colored pencil but it worked fantastically. So, this is exactly what the masking should have pulled up like. This was on a previous project but as you can see, I did leave more space in there for the mask to be able to have something to hold on to. So, this is what that should have looked like but I got a little bit aggressive with how tight the tolerances were.

So, this method of layering the mask does work. You just got to make sure that you leave enough holding space. So, I'll get that pulled up off the CNC and then I'll use a Gator Finishing sponge to sand over all of the edges just to break those edges and then I'll write a message as I always do on the back for my daughter. I use some Helmsman Spar Urethane to finish this up and I'm really happy with how that turned out. Let my daughter sign us off but hopefully you guys enjoyed this project and we will catch you guys back out here on the next one. Have a great day everybody. Stay safe out there.

I got you something.

Caity: What is it?

Matt: Let’s check it out.

Caity: Woo!

Matt: What do you think it says?

Caity: Caity’s Mud kitchen.

Matt: Mud kitchen? This is Caity's Kitchen. What is this right here?

Caity: A sandwich? [0:04:58 unclear]

Matt: You're gonna put it maybe up here? Yeah? You like that right there? Okay. Do you want me to take the things off? So right there? What are you doing?

Caity: ? [0:05:11 inaudible]

Matt: Is that for me? Thank you, Caity.

Caity: Have a great day. Stay safe out there. Thanks for watching. Bye bye.