Wood Products

Designed for external use on highways and public grounds. Manufactured from Sustainable Oak. Routed to shape and engraved with text and logo or image. Engraved areas can be coloured to your specification or left natural.

Matching posts or supports supplied, either engraved or plain. Single sided or double sided

Inset Signs - A recess is machined in the face to receive a pre-printed image such as a waymarker or prohibition notice, not only is this asthetically pleasing but also inhibits vandalism to the inset sign.

Finger Pointers play a large part in the wooden products we manufacture. These are engraved using one of three styles

Quality Prime Character Oak Only the finest Kiln Dried 8-10%, sustainable oak, with a maximum of 1 knot (stable - less than 15mm )per linear Metre Supplied in accordance with the FSC

Today we practice this art using the latest CAD and CNC Engineering Tools

When engraving wood we have three options available to us each of which has its strengths and weaknesses

Line engraving - Cutting on the line of the font

Pocket engraving - Cutting between the outlines of a font

'V-Carve' engraving - Cutting between the outlines of a font and maintaining the complete accuracy of a font

Manufacture

All cutters used in a router for engraving rotate at high speeds. The diagram above shows the change in width of cut as the depth of cut is increased when using a 'V' shaped cutter. When using a straight sided cutter the width of cut is not effected by change in depth.

Although the depth of cut is set for the router, when engraving wood this can vary for the following reason.

The structure of wood is not even due to the different seasonal conditions as the tree grows. Some parts of the wood structure become more dense than others. As moisture builds up in wood, it effects some areas more than others, causing more expansion in the cells that are less dense.

This uneven expansion throughout the wood may then go on to cause warping and bowing in the wood as well as overall expansion due to the water retention.

Brissco use 'Quality Prime Character Oak' (kiln dried to 8-10%) but even so their may be distortion of several mm over the length of a plank of wood used in the manufacture of Finger Pointers and Ladder Signs

General engraving issues

The following diagrams show the artwork and a computer simulation of the effect of engraving on wood The diagram on the left shows the effect of depth change when using Line engraving "Single Line Font". In the lower line the characters are in danger of merging as the depth of cut increases

The solution lies in the use of an outline font using either Pocket engraving as shown in the lower line "Double Line Font", or in V-Carve engraving (as discussed below). In these processes the material is removed from between the outlines of the font using a straight walled cutter. Whilst the shape of the font is ensured this process takes considerably longer than cutting the characters using a single line.

Pocket engraving The next picture shows the effect of using a straight line cutter with multiple passes. In each case a 100mm character is being cut using of three different diamater cutters 6mm with two passes, 4mm with four passes and 2mm with eight passes as can be seen from left to right. The smallest cutter interprets the font the most accurately but increase the machining time substantially.

However we believe the consistent quality maintained by use of a multi line cut speaks for itself and we would always advocate its use where high visibility quality is required. When budgets demand, the single line font is the least cost route available.

V-Carve engraving is used for more detailed work and ensures the most accurate representation of a font especially fonts with seriffs. Using 3 dimensional engraving each internal and external corner of a character is accurately represented.

This is achieved by the cutter starting at the corner of the character at the surface of the material and whilst moving in the X, Y axis it descends into the surface in the Z axis. This method is extremely useful on smaller characters (less than 25mm) and detailed logos. Observe the sharpness of the corners.

A finished engraving

The final picture shows an actual engraved logo, painted black, with a seriff font. Note the font size and detail against the rule. The quality speaks for itself