interior office sign

[Brian Michael clancy]

Hi Guys
I have a customer that would like to have an interior office sign made up of individual 6" plywood letters that are pinned/attached to a sheetrock wall spelling out the company name. The letters are made from Baltic birch plywood to match the reception desk. Any advice for an easier installation would be great.
thanks
Brian

[Keith Outten]

Brian,

Using plywood for standoff letters is like trying to make a silk purse from a sows ear. See if you can convince your customer to let you use a material that is better suited.

Assuming the plywood is not to be painted the edges will look horrible. You also have the problem of splitting to deal with as the router bit will no doubt damage the edges of some of the letters. This can happen when using solid wood as well, I know your aware of this problem.

The traditional way to install letters is to make a full size template that you mount on the surface so you can transfer the hole locations of each letter. You can do this easily by either purchasing or making your own marker that mounts in your router/spindle chuck. Put a large sheet of paper on your router table and run the same file you used to cut the letters, make adjustments to your tool path so the depth of cut is 1/16" or whatever depth is specified by the marker manufacturer.

I layout the holes for each letter in my drawing and have the router put the holes on the template. When the template is done set the letter on the template and transfer the hole locations.
.

[Rich Fennessey]

Plywood can look ok if you don't mind the look of the edges when they are painted. You will have some piece casualties since many times the plywood will have voids. The better quality plywood should minimize this. I originally dismissed plywood for signs but I've had pretty good luck with maple plywood and painting the edges black - similar to what I do for cedar signs. You just end up dumping or repairing them sometimes. Here is the example sign I'm referring to.