My most wonderful wife has really knocked one out of the park by passing her Professional Engineering exam.  It takes years of experience, many referrals, and an all day examination.  Her year of studying really paid off.  Once you are a “Professional Engineer” you can legally put PE after your name, kind of like being a doctor.

I thought she could use a new name plaque for work that showed off her accomplishment.  The day she left for the test I found a nice looking piece of padauk, her favorite wood, and got started.

My first attempt was to mill in the letters and infill with black color.  My black infill resin has gone bad.  It came out kind of chunky and left a ton of voids in the infill.

After that failure I planed off the messed up inlay, and started over.  Instead I tried painting the top surface black, then did a relief cut around the letters.  It was going ok, but the edges were left with a lot of fuzz and fraying.  Sanding the edges was ruining the black surface, so I planed all the paint off.  It looks good as all one color, so lets go with it!  Tons of sanding the mill marks off later, and I had this.

It took a few weeks of working on this while she was out of the house, but luckily for me it takes the PE board months to get back about the results.  Finally this past week she got the got the good news and I was able to deliver her new desk trophy.  Congrats dear!