There are some brave women here on the island who get together and travel the tip-to-tip Confederation Trail by bicycle. Last year a customer got me to make a commemorative décor piece as a gift for his wife who made the 273 km journey.
First I used my iPad to make a mock-up of what he wanted on the board. A few design changes followed, including turning the bike logo the other way around, since the women rode from east (right) to west (left).
The brown portion was to represent the trail itself and the customer wanted it to be routed out so that it wasn’t flat like the rest of the board. He also wanted to be able to put two photos, taken on the day, into the piece. Then he decided to have the top portion of the trail end with a post and the starting and ending place names to be painted on the posts which would extend off the top of the board.
The next step was to draw out the revised piece to scale on paper, it’s about 30” x 20”.
I glued together pieces of pine to make up the board including the two small tops of the posts.
On to cutting out the photo areas, I had two 4” x 6” pieces of glass to use so I cut about 1/4” all around smaller than that with my jigsaw.
Then I used my small router to take away the extra 1/4” just deep enough to fit the glass, photo, and a cardboard backing.
I also routed out places for small glass holders on each side of the photos. This is the back of the piece, you can see how the piece of glass will fit in (and not fall through!), then the photo will go in, covered by cardboard:
The front openings are slightly rounded over, this is what it looks like from the front:
Here is the back with a photo in it:
I will continue explaining how I made this piece in my next blog post.
Thanks for reading!