tea light holder

Hi everybody,

my sister is going to marry in two weeks and I’m in the middle of making a tea light holder that includes the weeding date in golden letters.

I cut five strips and two blocks of smoked oak and “copper oak” (dunno if that exists in the English woodworking world) and laminated them together. I planed and thicknessed the block to about 3,5 cm and drilled two holes for the glass inserts with a 4,5 cm Forstner bit.

After several test pieces with my Dremel tool I decided to use the router instead for the lettering. I took the smallest straight bit in my collection to cut the letters and then – after filing a chiseling the edges – used an acrylic golden paint from the art shop to fill them. As I’m going to plane it down a bit anyway I didn’t take too much care when applying the paint.

Yes, it’s upside down, the thing is still in the bench. What you see on the sides are two strips of fir to keep the iron away from the piece itself.

Questions right now:

a) I’m still not sure whether I should clip off the corners at a 45 degree angle or not.
b) Second choice to be made is whether I simply round over the edges or apply a serious chamfer to all those pretty sharp oak edges.
c) Should I add feet underneath to elevate it a bit from the table?

Any suggestions welcome!

Before anybody mentions it. I know the date is not perfectly symmetrical. Thats because I accidentally shot in an entry point for the first letter when setting up my router. Arrrrrghhhhhhh!

-- Alex ----- Bavaria in Germany