My mother recently asked me to woodburn her a sign for her kitchen to go along with the other two signs I made. She wanted the sign to say “My Kitchen Was Clean Last Week, Sorry You Missed It.” So began what would become my most challenging woodburning project yet.
The first thing I did was go online and try finding a font that matches the message of the sign. After experimenting with different fonts, I eventually decided to use one that was already installed on my computer, one called Poor Richard. I composed the layout of the sign and ended up with this template.
The challenging part was getting this template transferred to the wood on which I would do the woodburning. The wood was 23 inches long and I had to find a way to enlarge the template so the letters wouldn’t be too small. I found Rasterbator to be the perfect solution. I uploaded my image, specified the number of pages I wanted to use and minutes later, downloaded the PDF file of my image for printing across two pages. I taped the pages to the wood in preparation of transferring the template. Looking back on this step now, I should’ve adjusted the margin settings at Rasterbator to make the letters more visible among the two pages, but I was still able to transfer the template to the wood as described in the next step.
Next I used a pen and pressed down on the wood as I traced the outlines of the letters.
After I removed the paper, I took a pencil and marked the outlines to make them more visible.
When that was finished, I could see the transferred letters more easily.
All that was left to do was the woodburning.
Here’s how the sign looked after I intentionally burned “My Kitchen”.
After the lettering was done, I put in a border to complete the sign.
Of course, I signed and dated the back of the sign for posterity.
Now it’s ready for delivery to my parents’ house, where my mother will varnish the sign before hanging it in her kitchen.
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