I recently carved a 3 foot x 3 foot sign for a client and they told me that they would like the logo painted black.
The method I used was to spray the entire board with about 4 coats of satin polyurethane, then carve, then spray another 3 coats of satin polyurethane over the entire board/logo. Once that dried, I painted in the logo with black acrylic paint and wiped off the excess paint with a damp rag. The client wanted some of the black paint to cover over the entire board to give it a little darker tinge, so I wiped it with the same damp rag that had some black paint in it.
The issue I’m having right now is that it is a little too dark in spots on the board and there are some weird lighter areas around some letters, especially in the words Willow Creek. Should I just let the entire sign dry, then lightly sand the surface and hope that it removes some of the uneven black blotches around the logo? I don’t have a drum sander, so anything I do will either be by hand or with a palm sander.
Your first steps were on the mark. Spray clear, carve, black paint in carved area and wipe off.
Then, I would mix a small bit of black with my clear to make a tint and spray… Should be able to control the blackness that way.
Hi Trevor – first, very nice work on the sign – you certainly should let the entire thing dry for at least a day and see what happens. Though in this case I don’t know dry time will help. If I had to guess what happened, it looks like you sealed the area around the letters more than the rest of the board, and that resulted in the lighter areas. Given the outline effect around the letters, I’m not sure what Don suggests will work. You may have to sand back the top coat and re-finish. It shouldn’t affect the design or letters, so all is not lost. I would definitely seal everything before you do any sort of wipe-on accent coloring to ensure the accent gets absorbed evenly. Though it does sound like you did that the first time, so I’m a bit puzzled.
Just curious, are you using Pine or maybe poplar? They do have a tendency to be more “splotchy” than some of the hard woods like maple.
Looks fine to me . If the client doesn’t like it then fix it . Did you dilute the black when you wiped it ?
Use cheese cloth to wipe the black.(over the clear coat). In one direction . All trial and error .
This looks aged and fine to me .
I made a sign (smaller) similar to that but went about it in a slightly different way. I made the lettering slightly deeper than I normally would and then painted the whole thing black. I came back with my spoilboard surfacing bit and too a very thin layer off of the board. So just the black was left in the lettering and logo. I used pine (which I rarely use) and I didn’t like the color of the wood so I used wood conditioner and then stained it. Once it looked better I then used clear lacquer.
I got to agree with cyber on this one. Your gonna have to sand it back till you remove the pigment then refinish.
It does look like somehow the area around the carving got sealed more than the other areas. But what I don’t understand is if you completely sealed the wood with poly before painting then there shouldn’t be those halos around the letters. The pigment would have had to reach the wood and stain the unsealed areas to reveal the halos. Makes me think the wood wasn’t fully sealed.
What type of poly did you use - wiping? Or standard? Was is thinned?
I’m still pretty new at this but so far I’ve had success with sealing with shellac, covering with oramask, carving then painting followed by topcoat.
My understanding is a lot of woodworkers will use a dye to tint the topcoat then spray as many coasts as necessary to get the color desired using an hvlp system.
I was reading this and wondered what happened… did client like it? Or are you like me and had to have it perfect.
I was doing a lot of wedding signs a couple of years ago and at first I was finishing/carving/painting/sanding/refinishing. What was a game changer for me was masking.
Sanding/fishing/masking/carving/finish to seal carve/painting/remove masking/top coat of finish.
At first I’d mask a whole sign, which was a waste. Then I started to just mask the areas I carved. Saved a lot of masking that way.
