The Art and Challenges of Building a Carbon Fiber Flag: A Personal Account

I tried to use a spray-on finish on top of that to solidify it and that was a mistake what I should have used is like some penetrating epoxy or something like that because it didn't hold the charred pieces in place well enough and if you wiped across it some of those that come off and just smear black that was the first problem. The next problem is taking it to that Gator I don't know if I heated the board's up too fast didn't keep him wet enough just something about those boards but they curled on me a little bit more than I was expecting I had anticipated some wood movement not as much as I got. I think I've remedied most of that though I think I pulled it back together pretty well with with the clamps and with the furring strips on the back but you can still if you hold this up to the light you can see through it.

The second issue arose when I tried to burn the edges like I did on the traditional build but you can watch that build here much better. Build it just muddled all the Sun bleach stain I think part of that is the Sun bleached stain has a higher content of paint in it than other tented stains so I was literally just kind of burning pain at that point and if you go back and watch you'll see there's areas where it's just you can't tell the difference between a black stripe and stripe after I parted the second time. So, I had to go in and run the stain again and trying to get that stain to stay on the board you won it without getting it on the blackboard. It's kind of a pain in the butt I know somebody's gonna say why didn't you use tape because tape doesn't stick to charred wood after it rips off.

The third issue was with the contrast, specifically with my Union star. You couldn't really see the stars very well there was a lot of contrast so I ended up going back off-camera. Honestly, just forgot to turn it on that point in time. A little angry with myself at that time and I recurred these again. So much as carbon 50 star sucks really sucks carbon 100 but to add insult to injury I posted a progress picture of this on YouTube for my subscribers that's showing me carving the stars and one of my subscribers pointed out the fact that the stars are upside down, the main point is supposed to be going up and he's right. When I put the stencil down I had the flag turned upside down so the stencil looked right to me but the flag was upside down so obviously we can't turn it over stars are upside down.

The final thought about my experience building a carbon fiber flag, if I were to do it again here are the things I could change. One, I would make it out of oak in poplar and here's why when I did my experiment on taking stuff down for a Gator finish the oak didn't go Gator but it just goes jet black so I used oak for the dark stripes. The poplar on the other hand catered pretty well and it stayed pretty flat so to use poplar strips for the light strips as far as the union I'm not sure exactly how I would handle that, I'm thinking I would probably just cut the section out and then just do oak so just you know Seven Oaks lats glue them up separate carve them separate handle everything separate and then put them on at the end.

Oh yeah and I turn the stencil oh but we'll see. I don't know if I'm gonna make another flag, I'm gonna get a lot of inquiries for people that want to buy them but I think they're gonna buy the traditional build the one I already did. I'm probably not gonna post another video on doing that unless unless I'm gonna use epoxy or I'm gonna do something different to that kind of flag there's a bent wood challenge coming out check out the modern maker podcast for details.

I have enough wood to do one more flag so I there's a possibility that I might try to do bent like a bent wood flag and have have it wavy but I've got an idea to make it really cool so right now I don't want to give it away so I ain't saying poopit. It's building this and having all the road bumps along the way better than a nine-to-five in the office air-conditioned job hell yes

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enall right stop stop stop is there fire and rock'n'roll music turn it off let's talk about this build for a minute well it's not complete garbage stay tuned to the end and I will explain some of the issues that I had with this build as well as why my subscribers are better than your subscribers unless you don't have subscribers and then just my subscribers are awesome also this won't be a full build video I actually built another flag prior to this one a traditional flag you can watch that here I'll link in the description down below this video is going to start build in progress so I've already cut the boards down the size and everything so I start kind of mid build with the burning of the boards I said stay tuned to the end if you want to hear about the issues that I had and my solutions on how to Remy that in the future if you're thinking about building something similar to this now let's get to work basically I have 13 37 inch long inch and a half wide boards that are going to make up our flag this flag is going to have the Gator finish so here we are currently I torch the boards and then what I did is I just sprayed it like a matte finish on the top it basically makes it so it doesn't just rub off on your fingers I don't know if when I spray that the boards were too hot or why this occurred but there's some great going on here so if they're not just jet-black I think I'm going to try to work with that and see if that gives us a good pattern that runs run throughout the flag if not I'm gonna have to do something to stain the black stripes black I can't that makes any sense hopefully this video would be a little shorter it shouldn't take me as long to assemble the flag I'm just gonna put in the clamps what's up guys it is uh it's the next day I knew it may not seem like it to you but it does to me alright so here we are currently this is what this is what the flags look like I don't know how cool I am with this gray coming through there now I thought in my attic will detail I'm kind of on the fence about it right now I guess I decided to carve the stars first and see what the stars look like before I focus on that but I may come in here and make this darker somehow not exactly sure how I'm gonna do that yet but I will figure something out but right now we're gonna outline the stars I went out and bought a sharpie gray sharpie that's supposed to mark on dark wood I used to paint pen last time and did not like the way that came out it ended up kind of bleeding under the stars to a certain degree and last thing we want as little white stains all over the place if you know what I'm saying so we're gonna outline those I'm just gonna do the stars with a Fleck chef this time again it wasn't really happy with the way the other ones turned out they weren't as crisp as I would have liked them watched a couple of additional videos on on YouTube on how other people do it and it looks like a lot of people just use the flex shaft and they just go in and outline and then hog out so we're gonna try that this time around now let's get to work kids get up get to work and now is the time on sprockets where we carve horrible I don't hate it I don't love it either but I don't hate it you ever have one of those projects that just keeps going wrong that's what we're looking at here so I'm not saying this is a failure I learned a lot from it it's just not my favorite project in the world so let's talk about what went wrong the first thing that went wrong is when I did the gator finish I tried to use a spray-on finish on top of that to solidify it and that was a mistake what I should have used is like some penetrating epoxy or something like that because it didn't hold the charred pieces in place well enough and if you wiped across it some of those that come off and just smear black that was the first problem the next problem is taking it to that Gator I don't know if I heated the board's up too fast didn't keep him wet enough just something about those boards but they curled on me a little bit more than I was expecting I had anticipated some wood movement not as much as I got I think I've remedied most of that though I think I pulled it back together pretty well with with the clamps and with the furring strips on the back but you can still if you hold this up to the light you can see through it the next problem happened when I tried to burn the edges like I did on the traditional build but you can watch that build here much better build it just muddled all the Sun bleach stain I think part of that is the Sun bleached stain has a higher content of paint in it than other tented stains so I was literally just kind of burning pain at that point and if you go back and watch you'll see there's areas where it's just you can't tell the difference between a black stripe and stripe after I parted the second time so then I had to go in and I had to run the stain again and trying to get that stain to stay on the board you won it without getting it on the blackboard it's it's kind of a pain in the butt I know somebody's gonna say why didn't you use tape because tape doesn't stick to charred wood after it rips of the second time the other problem was it kind of washed out my Union you couldn't really see the stars very well there was a lot of contrast so I ended up going back off-camera I honestly just forgot to turn it on that point in time a little little angry with myself at that time and I recurved these again so as much as carbon 50 star sucks really sucks carbon 100 but to add insult to injury I posted a progress picture of this on YouTube for my subscribers that's showing me carving the stars and one of my subscribers pointed out the fact that the stars are upside down that the the main point is supposed to be going up and he's right I when I when I put the stencil down I had the flag turned upside down so the stencil looked right to me but the flag was upside down so obviously we can't turn it over stars are upside down but and this is why my subscribers are awesome his his response is priceless so I said yeah I'm like you're absolutely right so his response was and this is ouch six nine nine I don't know if that's his real name or not that just makes it rare if anyone asks just say much is custom and that's why my subscribers are awesome if you haven't subscribed already subscribe now just if nothing else to me to cut bunch of other cool people if I had it to do over again here are the things I could change one I would make it out of oak in poplar and here's why when I did my experiment on taking stuff down for a gator finish the oak didn't go Gator but it just goes jet black so I used to oak for the dark stripes the poplar on the other hand catered pretty well and it stayed pretty flat so to use poplar strips for the light strips as far as the union I'm not sure exactly how I would handle that I'm thinking I would probably just cut the section out and then just do oak so just you know Seven Oaks lats glue them up separate carve them separate handle everything separate and then put them on at the end oh yeah and I turn the stencil oh but we'll see I don't know if I'm gonna make another flag I'm gonna get a lot of inquiries for people that want to buy them but I think I think they're gonna buy the traditional build the one I already did I'm probably not gonna post another video on doing that unless unless I'm gonna use epoxy or I'm gonna do something different to that kind of flag there's a bent wood challenge coming out check out the modern maker podcast for details I do have enough wood to do one more flag so I there's a possibility that I might try to do bent like a bent wood flag and have have it wavy but I've got an idea to make it really cool so right now I don't want to give it away so I ain't saying poopit it's building this and having all the road bumps along the way better than a nine-to-five in the office air-conditioned job hell yesall right stop stop stop is there fire and rock'n'roll music turn it off let's talk about this build for a minute well it's not complete garbage stay tuned to the end and I will explain some of the issues that I had with this build as well as why my subscribers are better than your subscribers unless you don't have subscribers and then just my subscribers are awesome also this won't be a full build video I actually built another flag prior to this one a traditional flag you can watch that here I'll link in the description down below this video is going to start build in progress so I've already cut the boards down the size and everything so I start kind of mid build with the burning of the boards I said stay tuned to the end if you want to hear about the issues that I had and my solutions on how to Remy that in the future if you're thinking about building something similar to this now let's get to work basically I have 13 37 inch long inch and a half wide boards that are going to make up our flag this flag is going to have the Gator finish so here we are currently I torch the boards and then what I did is I just sprayed it like a matte finish on the top it basically makes it so it doesn't just rub off on your fingers I don't know if when I spray that the boards were too hot or why this occurred but there's some great going on here so if they're not just jet-black I think I'm going to try to work with that and see if that gives us a good pattern that runs run throughout the flag if not I'm gonna have to do something to stain the black stripes black I can't that makes any sense hopefully this video would be a little shorter it shouldn't take me as long to assemble the flag I'm just gonna put in the clamps what's up guys it is uh it's the next day I knew it may not seem like it to you but it does to me alright so here we are currently this is what this is what the flags look like I don't know how cool I am with this gray coming through there now I thought in my attic will detail I'm kind of on the fence about it right now I guess I decided to carve the stars first and see what the stars look like before I focus on that but I may come in here and make this darker somehow not exactly sure how I'm gonna do that yet but I will figure something out but right now we're gonna outline the stars I went out and bought a sharpie gray sharpie that's supposed to mark on dark wood I used to paint pen last time and did not like the way that came out it ended up kind of bleeding under the stars to a certain degree and last thing we want as little white stains all over the place if you know what I'm saying so we're gonna outline those I'm just gonna do the stars with a Fleck chef this time again it wasn't really happy with the way the other ones turned out they weren't as crisp as I would have liked them watched a couple of additional videos on on YouTube on how other people do it and it looks like a lot of people just use the flex shaft and they just go in and outline and then hog out so we're gonna try that this time around now let's get to work kids get up get to work and now is the time on sprockets where we carve horrible I don't hate it I don't love it either but I don't hate it you ever have one of those projects that just keeps going wrong that's what we're looking at here so I'm not saying this is a failure I learned a lot from it it's just not my favorite project in the world so let's talk about what went wrong the first thing that went wrong is when I did the gator finish I tried to use a spray-on finish on top of that to solidify it and that was a mistake what I should have used is like some penetrating epoxy or something like that because it didn't hold the charred pieces in place well enough and if you wiped across it some of those that come off and just smear black that was the first problem the next problem is taking it to that Gator I don't know if I heated the board's up too fast didn't keep him wet enough just something about those boards but they curled on me a little bit more than I was expecting I had anticipated some wood movement not as much as I got I think I've remedied most of that though I think I pulled it back together pretty well with with the clamps and with the furring strips on the back but you can still if you hold this up to the light you can see through it the next problem happened when I tried to burn the edges like I did on the traditional build but you can watch that build here much better build it just muddled all the Sun bleach stain I think part of that is the Sun bleached stain has a higher content of paint in it than other tented stains so I was literally just kind of burning pain at that point and if you go back and watch you'll see there's areas where it's just you can't tell the difference between a black stripe and stripe after I parted the second time so then I had to go in and I had to run the stain again and trying to get that stain to stay on the board you won it without getting it on the blackboard it's it's kind of a pain in the butt I know somebody's gonna say why didn't you use tape because tape doesn't stick to charred wood after it rips of the second time the other problem was it kind of washed out my Union you couldn't really see the stars very well there was a lot of contrast so I ended up going back off-camera I honestly just forgot to turn it on that point in time a little little angry with myself at that time and I recurved these again so as much as carbon 50 star sucks really sucks carbon 100 but to add insult to injury I posted a progress picture of this on YouTube for my subscribers that's showing me carving the stars and one of my subscribers pointed out the fact that the stars are upside down that the the main point is supposed to be going up and he's right I when I when I put the stencil down I had the flag turned upside down so the stencil looked right to me but the flag was upside down so obviously we can't turn it over stars are upside down but and this is why my subscribers are awesome his his response is priceless so I said yeah I'm like you're absolutely right so his response was and this is ouch six nine nine I don't know if that's his real name or not that just makes it rare if anyone asks just say much is custom and that's why my subscribers are awesome if you haven't subscribed already subscribe now just if nothing else to me to cut bunch of other cool people if I had it to do over again here are the things I could change one I would make it out of oak in poplar and here's why when I did my experiment on taking stuff down for a gator finish the oak didn't go Gator but it just goes jet black so I used to oak for the dark stripes the poplar on the other hand catered pretty well and it stayed pretty flat so to use poplar strips for the light strips as far as the union I'm not sure exactly how I would handle that I'm thinking I would probably just cut the section out and then just do oak so just you know Seven Oaks lats glue them up separate carve them separate handle everything separate and then put them on at the end oh yeah and I turn the stencil oh but we'll see I don't know if I'm gonna make another flag I'm gonna get a lot of inquiries for people that want to buy them but I think I think they're gonna buy the traditional build the one I already did I'm probably not gonna post another video on doing that unless unless I'm gonna use epoxy or I'm gonna do something different to that kind of flag there's a bent wood challenge coming out check out the modern maker podcast for details I do have enough wood to do one more flag so I there's a possibility that I might try to do bent like a bent wood flag and have have it wavy but I've got an idea to make it really cool so right now I don't want to give it away so I ain't saying poopit it's building this and having all the road bumps along the way better than a nine-to-five in the office air-conditioned job hell yes\n"