Extruding characters on a tree

Quite often, in the manufacture of wood crafts, it becomes necessary to apply various signs, for example, letters and numbers, to the surface of wooden products.
This operation can be performed in various ways, for example, simply draw signs with a felt-tip pen, stick them on paper or cardboard, or burn them out, applying pre-made and glowing sign blanks to the surface.
There is another way to apply letters and numbers to wooden surfaces, which is to extrude them. Below we will consider this very easily implemented method, for the implementation of which you need a little patience and some materials and tools.

We will need:

• a piece of annealed (knitting) wire;
• long pliers (platypuses);
• flat hammer;
• varnish and paint.

The process of extruding characters on a wood surface

1. First, you need to make a set of all the necessary signs using a pair of platypuses, using annealed wire for this. Moreover, some elements of signs can be unified.
Consider, for example, numbers. It makes no sense to bend everything from the wire. So, the unit blank can be used to extrude part of the four. Of the elements of the three and the four, you can make a five. If you turn the six, you get a nine, etc.
2. Further, in order not to be mistaken, it is possible to draw with a pencil or marker a sequence of characters on the surface of a tree.
3. Then, using a temporary stencil, set the wire shape of the number or its element, and hit it with a hammer. If the form is jammed in a tree, then it can be carefully removed from the bed by prying it with a thin awl or a thick needle.
4. In order to mechanically extruded signs looked aesthetically pleasing or consistent with the overall design of a wooden product, they can be painted in one color.
But you should carefully paint the recesses of the signs, especially if the basis is soft wood, for example, pine or linden. Otherwise, the paint that has fallen into the recesses of the signs will begin to spread throughout the pores in all directions, and the outlines of letters and numbers will lose their clarity of form.
To prevent this from happening, it is necessary to coat the depressions with varnish before painting and let it harden. After that, you can apply the paint. If after drying the paint the surface with the printed signs is again varnished, then the inscriptions will last without loss of quality for many years.
Where is it possible to use this method of obtaining characters on a wooden surface? You can, for example, number the hooks on the hanger in the dressing room, the shield with the keys in the hostel, the end face of the podium with samples, etc.
Original article in English