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View Full Version : Advice needed. Can this work?



Robert Cox
07-19-2004, 4:43 PM
My Dad died when I was 12. Recently I have been given a bunch of photos of him at work and his first tool of the trade that appears in some of his early pics.

Dad was a jockey. In fact, he was the first licensed jockey from South Carolina according to an old clipping.

The tool I have is his first whip. Still with a bit of the string he tied to it to loop over his wrist so it would not be dropped.

I have 8x10 photos of him winning races at the Myrtle Beach SC racetrack just after WW II when he was 14 or so.

I also have some like the attached.

What I want to do is make a case to seal the whip in and laser engrave an early and a late pic above that along with some other info.

I want this to be really nice. Nice enough to continue to pass down for many generations.

But I am new at woodworking and don't know what woods would be suitable both to show the whips leather and the engraving I want done.

Any advice?

This is a late pic.

Bruce Shiverdecker
07-19-2004, 6:05 PM
Just my opinion, but I would use either Cherry or Birch.

Have you thought of having the pictures engraved on Brass or Copper? That might make an interesting effect.

Good Luck. When you decide and get it done, it would be nice to see a post of it.

Bruce

Shaddy Dedmore
07-19-2004, 8:09 PM
What are the dimensions of the crop? I was thinking of a felt lined shadow box with one pic in the upper left and the other in the lower right. With the crop placed diagonally bottom left to upper right between the pics. That could be quite big though, if the crop was large, like poster size. Cherry would be a nice way to go for the box, the extremes, light to dark would be Maple, Cherry, Walnut. Can't really go too wrong sticking with those three, but there are tons of exotics to choose from, depending on your desired effect.

I would probably want to keep the detail of the pics, so I wouldn't use wood as the etching medium. Just my opinion.

Also, maybe one black marble plaque with a pic and some nice words etched into it, and have the bottom front of the stand extend for a mount for the crop to rest on. Might get an acrylic case glued up to protect the crop and be displayed in. Might also have the whole thing mounted on some 3/4" wood, and have the acrylic case be a large box that fits over the plaque and the crop and fits into a groove cut into the wood base.

If the case was long enough, you could fit a couple plaques in there. If it got too heavey, there are coated acrylics instead of marble, but I have no experiance with those, they might not have as good of a photo quality as marble.

Just some thoughts... let us know what you end up doing, I'm interested.

Shaddy

Keith Outten
07-19-2004, 9:21 PM
Robert,

My suggestion is to create a large rectangular cherry plaque as a base for the display. Since black marble will provide the best quality for photographs have two marble plaques made, one for each picture. Mount the marble plaques side by side at the top. Since the crop is probably about 24" long the two 12" marble tiles should fit symmetrically.

The crop could be mounted (encased) in an acrylic half-circle below the marble photos with another black marble rectangular tile at the bottom with the appropriate text describing the display. The marble plaques should be inlay-ed into the cherry about 1/4" deep thus leaving about 1/8" above the surface of the cherry.

Aaron Koehl
07-20-2004, 8:56 AM
A few hours of photo editing will get that picture looking awesome on black marble--

Robert Cox
07-20-2004, 12:44 PM
What I am hearing is engraving on wood is not the best choice for details.

I don't have any idea what pics on copper, brass, or marble would turn out like. Anyone got a link to their samples?

Shaddy Dedmore
07-20-2004, 5:49 PM
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=9736&highlight=marble

Check out Mike's Thread on this forum. There are more here too if you look for the links with attachements.

This is a practice piece of black marble I was using. I used a gold paint to rub into the border, turned out pretty good. Still working on my photo processing though, to make it look more photographic when it gets to the marble. The lower right turned out well. Not a good high res photo, but you'll get the jist I think.

Shaddy Dedmore
08-16-2004, 5:39 PM
What did you end up doing Robert?

Just curious.