The second name plaque for the Sign Magic Workshop was to have a hidden message. It's always fun to hide stuff! Doug loves weathered metal with rivets and that happens to be one of my specialties. He also claims to be a member of the 'Blind Magicians of the Orient'. I decided the piece would be a salvaged part of a ship named 'DOUG' of course. It is slightly tweaked and some rivets are missing. For those who can figure it out the raised rivets would read 'MAGIC' - in braille of course. As always I first did a quick sketch in my book. There wasn't much to it, but there was enough for me to know the idea would work. I could imagine the rest.
Next was a vector file, then a 3D file created in EnRoute. Once I had created the flat reliefs I imported a bitmap from my collection. EnRoute reads the shades of white, grey and black and assigns them height values depending on their value. White is highest, grays in between and black stays low. This file creates a wave when it is done.
The next bitmap file I imported is called 'splotches 2'. I know from experience that when I apply a small numeric value to it 0.1" it comes out like pitted metal when I route it.
The rivet were simple domed reliefs. The lettering was a flat relief. The file didn't take long to create for it was pretty simple.
I would route it as always from 30 lb Precision Board. These samples would be handled lots and also have to travel in a suitcase home. Being made from strong material was critical. The dense HDU would also save me labor as I finished the piece too.
I tool pathed the file in two passes. The first rough pass was 3/8" ball nose bit. The final pass was done using a 1/8" ball nose bit. I ran the MultiCam at 300 inches per minute. The file took about n hour to complete. This will be a fun piece to paint and age properly.
-dan
