Black letters on white board
Can anyone tell me a finishing method on getting black colored letters on a colored (white) board. I am using the centerline program with a 60 degree V carve bit. To get black letters I dab (I'm no painter) black paint in all of the recessed text, let dry, and sand to take of excess on board face and reveal black font. I see projects where they have black font with a white or other colored board face. How are the getting the color on there without getting it in the black font? Or if anyone has a different technique for painting V carve signs I would appreciate insight. Had thought of painting board first then carving; good idea or not?
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Some other methods from keeping paint out of wood pores around V-carves
When you use a sanding sealer you generally are going to either paint or polyurethane over top. What about if you want to stain the surface after you have painted your vcarve text?
I have tried a number of things all with varying degrees of success. I've used an acrylic sealer which sits on the surface of the wood and prevents the paint from getting into the pores but you have to plane this off because it will completely clog up a sanding pad or belt. I generally plane my boards BEFORE running them in the machine because I'm making glued up panels which need to be leveled so I would prefer to not plane them again if possible.
I tried something similar to the shelf paper by using clear packing tape. This was a tip given here in another thread. It was a mess trying to get that tape off though and I finally got frustrated and ran it through the planer.
I have thought about the sanding sealer but after calling Minwax yesterday, I don't think that is such a great idea if you want to STAIN the surface of the wood after your letters are painted. Minwax tells me that the product is designed to penetrate approximately 1/8" into the wood which would cause issues with the stain I think. They suggested that maybe using their Wood Conditioner and letting it completely dry would seal off the pores. The thing about this product is that it's designed to work with stain so this might be a better alternative than sanding sealer.
I was also thinking that maybe applying a coat of natural ( no tint ) stain may work and still allow the surface to still accept stain once the lettering is done.
I have gotten my best results by brushing in a semi-gloss latex paint like Rust-oleum's Painter Touch black. This can take a while though when working with complicated vCarves like I do.
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Projects like this I prefer to use a spray can of semi-gloss paint. But this means a large portion of the project is going to get covered in paint and the spray tends to work it's way into the pores of a wood like oak or a softwood like pine. This ends up sometimes requiring a few extra passes in the planer which can mean I'm bringing the thickness close to 5/8" by the time I'm done.
I haven't tried the Wood Conditioner yet and I am just finishing up a V-carve project right now and I think I will give this a shot this time around and see what happens. I'm going to end up using a spray can to paint everything black since it's a fairly involved project and I just don't have the time to hand paint all the lines. I'll post my results but I would love to hear some responses from anyone that has used something like the Wood Conditioner or other product application.