Stencil type letters

[Todd Schwartz]

I am working on producing a stencil to be used to route out letters for a sign - this is a one time event and a labor of love for the local Pheasants Forever group.

I need recommendations on a font that will not drop out the inside of the 'a' , 'o'. 'p', etc.

I have the fonts Stencil and one called Alba - like the look of the Alba but would like it not to be so artistic.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Todd

[Dave Fifield]

Why not stick with whatever font you want and simply make all the letters that have inside cuts (i.e. in most fonts, the letters A,B,D,O,P,Q,R,a,b,d,e,g,o,p, and q) using two stencils? For example, here's a set of router template guide "stencils" for a 5" tall letter "A" that I made recently:

http://www.woodust.com/A5a.jpg

http://www.woodust.com/A5b.jpg

Note the use of vertical and horizontal alignment lines. I make these using very light vector cuts (so they don't go very deep). Using raster takes forever. I make my templates from 1/4" clear acrylic and stick them in place on the wood using double-sided tape.

Here are the Corel Draw X3 files JIC:

http://www.woodust.com/A5a.cdr

http://www.woodust.com/A5b.cdr

I just noticed that you have Corel Draw 12, so here are the files for that:

http://www.woodust.com/A5a_cdr12.cdr

http://www.woodust.com/A5b_cdr12.cdr

Hope this helps,

[Rodne Gold]

I generally use the font the customer likes and make a small bridge to the inside of the letter which would fall out using shaping. (its a lot easier in corel X3 using smartfill than in 12 where you have to convert to curves and then trim etc
I do tell customers that stencil fonts have to have bridges and some graphics cant be made into stencils.

[Mike Null]

If you use just a small rectangular box filled white with no outline you can create your own stencil fonts from most fonts in Corel.. I believe the attached example does what you want.

[Aaron Koehl]

Such great ideas everyone!

[Todd Schwartz]

Thanks - it is mind-boggling the amount of experience that is part of this group. Appreciate the ideas from both Dave and Mike. Because of the number of letters and the desire to make this a one run project we went with the vertical line.

The virtual segment delete tool is an amazing piece of technology - took me about 15 seconds per letter to break it apart as in Mike's example.

Again, thank you,

Todd