My Wife's Family Birthday Plaque

As gifts go, my family and friends get iPods, X-Boxes, PS3s, etc. I get pieces of wood. I get the better deal, I think. This board was one of those gifts. It is a spalted (and partially rotted) piece of pine from a tree that was uprooted during a pretty bad tornado in Alabama last year. It took about a month of soaking and building up with thinned polyurethane to make it hard enough to work with. Every day about three times per day I would soak it with poly and let it absorb into the soft wood. Then it took about a week or so to cure enough to work with. I know that this is a simple project, but it really is still not furniture worthy. Too much trouble for a rotten piece of wood, you might be saying. The wife wants, what the wife wants and a happy wife makes a happy husband (big smile).

Anyway, this is the final product. She was overjoyed when I hung it up last night with all of the tags done (another two days of cutting stencils and painting).

I cut vinyl decals as another hobby. The fonts are cut from vinyl and used as a stencil to paint the words. I used a 3/8 keyhole bit to cut two keyholes horizontally in the back at 16” centers to hang it.

Width – 27-1/2”
Height – 7-1/4” at the tallest point.

Tags – 1-1/2” diameter on 2” centers.

I am also trying to sell these on Etsy. I have a lot of interest, but no sales yet. It will come.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/CornerstoneFlats

-- A carpenter takes an ugly, knotted, twisted piece of wood and makes something beautiful and pure from it. Jesus is a carpenter, I am a piece of wood.