Sandwich Board for the FARM

I have some of my things for sale at a great little store in downtown North Bay, Ontario called The FARM.
FARM stands for Fashion Art Retail Market and has things for sale by creative people, most whom are local. This includes jewellery, soap, photos, clothing, bags and, of course, my wood signs!

The owner Katie, who sews beautiful garments, asked if I could make her a sandwich board to sit on the sidewalk outside her shop... of course I said YES!

Here it is in use in front of the store (thanks to Liz Lott for the photo)

The sandwich board was to be about 2' wide x under 4' tall and needed to have two sides with a chalk board on each side that Katie could write on. Since she likes my pallet wood signs, she wanted the frame made from pallet wood.

This is how the frame would look, I'll show it first and then explain the making of it:

At the top, the cross piece will run right across and join the side legs in a half lap joint.

For the half lap, half of the wood is taken from each piece so that they, together make one thickness. To do this I use my table saw and dado blades.

Dado blades take the place of one saw blade and allow more wood to be taken in one pass of the blade. I set mine to about 3/4" wide and then run across the blade a few times to get the width I need off the wood. The blades are set at a height that will take off half the thickness of the wood.

This is what each piece looks like with the half lap made:

You can see here how the corner comes together when both pieces have half of their thickness removed:

and this is the corner put together:

For the bottom crosspiece, the vertical piece is the same but the leg will have half it's thickness removed about 2/3rds of the way down the leg and not at the end of the leg:

Here it is put together, showing the back side:

and from the front:

To keep the frame together I use exterior wood glue and strong clamps to hold it for about an hour.

I use hardboard for the chalk board portion and paint it two coats of chalk board paint. I painted the logo of the FARM on the top, right on the black paint.

The hardboard was cut 3/4" wider and taller than the space between the frame, so to get the chalk board to fit behind the frame, I routed out about 3/8" wide and the depth of the hardboard. The board then sits in this opening:

This frame will be dry-brushed with white paint. The raw wood is quite light and I stain it darker with my steel wool in vinegar stain so that where the white paint doesn't cover, you see a medium colour of wood.