There are so many quotes and sayings out there to tell someone you love them or how you feel about them. But how far will you travel, how many miles will you go to be with them? Would you travel the world for them?...with them? This map contains many statements and quotes regarding the lengths we would go for love in addition to many others that just profess our feelings of happiness and warmth we have for our significant other. I did this as a gift for a friend who wanted to propose to his fiance with it. The original version of this had "Will you marry me?" in with the rest of the quotes, but I removed it for this version which I present to you. It is completely designed in XCS (importing a map) and contains well over 50 well known (as well as obscure) quotes on travel, togetherness, and, of course, love.
This was designed with the intention of being a large sign to hang on a wall. I did this on a 12"x19" piece of Birch wood and centered it on the wood so no cuts were needed. Due to the size and the amount of engraving, if you use the settings I provide in step 2, you will have over 90 minutes of engrave cut time. While you can scale this to a smaller size, do be aware that the letters of some of the quotes are small and may become too tiny to read at a smaller size.
Note that the quotes do overlap the borders on the map in some areas but this is to be expected in such an endevour as this. It is rare enough and not extreme enough that most will not mind the tiny overlaps.
To darken the letters after engraving, you may want to do a light stain to darken the wood which in turn will darken the letters.
Set up your wood in your machine and center it. Using the P2, you can do this by drawing a square the exact size of your wood and use the close up camera to align the square at the corners. Once that is done, turn on auto snapping by pressing Control R. Select the map and quotes and center it in the square you made. This will in turn center it on the wood. Delete the square and your project is now ready to engrave.
While the settings above are provided, keep in mind that each machine and each wood is different, especially if you got the wood from a different source. Adjust the settings for engrave and score to accomodate your machine/material. Process your engrave.
Once the engraving is finished, sand it to remove any burn marks (see before sanding and after sanding pictures above) and then, if you desire, coat it with a thin poly coat.
Included with this file on Canvas 2 is the hangers. These are cut from 1/8" (3mm) birch/scrap wood. Use the cut settings above to cut out the pieces. You should have 2 pieces with a keyhole cut out, 2 frame pieces and then 2 center pieces from those frames.
Take a keyhole piece and glue it to the top of a frame piece. Glue this, keyhole side up, to the upper right corner approximately ½" to 1" in from the top and side. Do the same thing on the opposite corner. This needs to be the same on both sides and as exact as possible to keep the sign hanging level. (HINT: Take the two center pieces and line them up in the corners and place a mark to get a guide to where to place the hangers. See photos.)
Take one of the center cutouts from the frame pieces and glue it to the bottom right corner, again, about ½" to 1" in from the edges. This does not need to be as accurate as the hangers but should be close to the bottom corner without going to the edges. Do the same to the opposite corner. These provide slight bumpers to raise the bottom of the sign from the wall.
Once the glue is dried, your sign is ready to hang.