Nuts and Volts - September 2014

but not very scary looking ... yet.

The next step is to hand contour the piece to rough it up so it looks aged and weathered. There are many tools and methods you could use here, and you could spend a lot of time adding detail. Remember how impatient I am, though? I grabbed a die grinder with a rasp bit and a sanding wheel. I also used a hand rasp, and then smoothed out certain parts of the tombstone with some DAP fast drying latex caulk (Figure 7). Watch out for that die grinder — you can remove too much material in a hurry if you are not careful.

Finishing Touches

So far, so good, but have you ever seen a pink tombstone? Me neither. So, let’s change its color!

I love modern spray paint technology. There are many fast-drying exotic finishes available — your options are limitless. You can get a fantastic finish with little time and effort. A fleck stone spray paint finish was very tempting here, but since most spray paints will dissolve foam, I decided to use latex. I chose a satin gray as my base coat, and then used gray, black, and burnt umber mixes to weather and shade the tombstone (Figure 8).

Save Time, Save Money

You can spend a little time or a lot of time here. These tombstones are typically viewed under low light conditions, so I was looking mostly for contrast and depth, and that didn’t require a lot of time. Here is a breakdown of the time invested in this project: • Research: 3 hours • Design time: 1 hour • CNC routing: 30 minutes • Hand contouring: 10 minutes • Painting: 30 minutes So, my total time was 5: 10. FIGURE 8. Painting suppliesand brushes.