hey guys so this time i got a new jig it's a signmaker jig that i picked up at rockler and i actually got it on a black friday sale so i got it for pretty cheap and i tried once
router woodworking craftsman, before actually using a sign jig and i have this mess of a product and i'm not going to talk to much about it because just thinking about it gets me angry again
and how well that did not turn out so i'm sure there are some of you out here who have this one like it good for you i had a horrible time with it so i'm going to give this one a shot and do a review of how well it goes and hopefully this one goes a lot better okay so here is the deluxe kit from rockler that i got and in it it has all the
with the deluxe kit you actually get all the letters as well as all the numbers and symbols and you know it's about as straight forward as from what i can tell as it looks you simply snap them all together and lay them out one thing it does include is this plastic bushing it's like a guide for the router when it actually gets on there you move the router and it
kind of follows it the problem is when i actually used a plastic guide bushing thing once before and the bit got so hot that it actually starts to melt the plastic and i don't know if maybe i wasn't using it right or maybe it just got over used but what i decided to do was instead of using the guide that came with it i decided to go ahead and buy a brass one and i got
this from rockler as well and its the same size and its supposed to be universal and i have tested it with my router to make sure it worked and it does it sits right in there and then once you get your letters down you just sort of follow the template around and hopefully it works pretty well i know on the other kit i had the whole thing on that was
a nightmare the whole setup the pieces working just trying to get everything to work didn't work that well this time i really have high hopes that this one will do great and that we'll be able to just lay it down and see how it works all right well to start i wanted to go ahead and make sure my guide on my router and it actually sits in there just perfect
i think there are bases that will fit on most routers to make it more universal this one works pretty well it's recessed in and it sits in there nice and snug and i'll just tighten this up a little bit so there we have that well i've gone ahead and got my letters layed out and what i decided i would do is just make a sign for my website
and i went ahead and tried to pull out as many of the letters as i could now some of the letters i'm going to need to use over and over again like the letter o and the kit does come with a couple of those which is great but i can't lay out the entire pattern in one piece i'm going to have to actually pull up or rout part of the sign take
up some of my letters and lay them back down so after you get all of the letters layed down really the next step is just some painters tape to hold it in place so that when you rout it things aren't moving around on you i just need to grab my router and go at it so when it came to just routing the sign really i think the secret here is
to take your time and make sure that you're really looking at each letter you know as close as you can the last thing you want to do is sort of push down on the plunge router and maybe not go all the way and ruin one of your templastes or possbily even your bit if your not down far enough so after i finished routing out the letters
on my sign i decided that i wanted to round over all the edges and there are a lot of options that you can do and how you want that to look and i chose just a simple round over for mine so after getting everthing done i did just a pretty standard sanding acroos the front of the sign as well as the back and i only did two grits of paper on this
on this one i almost always do three if its an heirloom project this one maybe i took a short step there but i think you can get away with that well its done i still got to paint it but i guess i could go ahead and drill some holes in the back so that it can hang and i have this little template that i bought from rockler you really don't
need this but i kind of got suckered intoit it just looked like a good idea and it does work pretty well its nice that you can just line it up and i guess you don't have to mess with attaching a board to use as a guide and it's quick too ad it comes with two different slots that if you have two that are right by and a long one in the middle here we go
all i have left is to give it a schlack or maybe a lacquer and then paint it so i'm just about done with my sign i've got everthing carved out and last but not least is i just need to paint it so for my sign on the inside i'm just going to paint it black and i actually decided to do a coat of lacquer before i painted it which i had always thought you just don't
do that and i found a website that actually recommended that you apply a coat of lacquer a single coat a light coat and then you back and paint right on top of that you let it sit and then you apply another coat of lacquer on top of that so i tried that once before on another thing and it actually worked and everything looked fine it wasn't a sign that i was doing but it held together
for this one honestly i don't think i'm going to put another layer of lacquer on topof it cause it's going to stay on the inside and i'm not going to have it on the outdoors so i think it'll be pretty well protected all right guys well i got my sign finished and it turned out pretty good and i really can't say enough about the rockler signmakerkit it really was easy and compared to the
other sign making kit that i've used before in the past this one really was simple so i recommend it and i think my only criticism really is just that the guide bushing that comes with it is it's a plastic one and so i would definitely look into buying a there's a brass one that you can buy and rockler has it too and it's pretty cheap so check it out
see if you like it and as always you can check out my site at woodlogger.com for more pictures and other videos
