Jim Green’s Custom Military Plaque
This plaque was created for a friend of Clay’s who retired in 2016. We created this piece as a tribute to his years in the Air Force. We added both badges he wore in his 24 years and a quote that he used frequently.
We chose a natural cut of Basswood with the bark edges because it matches his personality and style. These custom plaques can easily be changed with different headers, badges, images, quotes, dates, etc.
We stained the wood with a light honey oak and we left the eagle unstained. I wanted the eagle to stand out and retain its white feathered look. Staining the rest of the wood really makes the eagle pop off of the plaque.
You can see the close ups below of the finished wood burning. It burns into the wood 
slightly and leaves a texture. Sometimes I create an intentional texture pattern into the letters. If you look closely at the letters in United States, you’ll see I left these letters without a pattern and just filled in the letters with the shading tip.
The basswood grain is so tight that it burns very evenly. Other loose light/dark grains like pine tend to burn unevenly because the dark grains burn harder than the light grains. These basswood pieces are great for plaques since the burn of the lettering is so important to keep tight.
This piece was one of the first few that I ever burned and Clay and I were both so happy with finished results. Jim was really happy with it too and we hope that he enjoys it through his retirement years.
To order a custom military plaque, fill out a request on our custom order page. We’d love to work on your next plaque.
