Custom Combination Banks & 12″ Letters Banks
In this production run, SandboxRanch.com made a few custom combination banks and big 12″ tall letter banks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFxPxVDa9GI/
As we make everything to order once an order is received, it means that SandboxRanch.com can offer you endless flexibility when it comes to what we make, although we can offer just simple letters to our customers, the possibilities are endless regarding how those letters are represented.
As with every bank we make at SandboxRanch.com, they begin life as rough sawed kiln dried lumber which we then cut into strips and glue together, this gives the end-products we produce a tremendous amount of strength and rigidity.
I got tired of looking at a blank wall so I made-up a little banner to fill-up the wall next to my Thermwood CNC router, the one that makes all these custom combination banks, that is a 6ft wide banner and gives you a scale of just how larger this router is!
After flattening one side of the dried and laminated slab, it’s time to flip it around and do the same on the other side, this assures that all the glue seams are flawless – as of yesterday, I now have a jointer so some of this tedious processing will no longer be done using my router so as with everything else at SandboxRanch.com, things keep evolving for higher efficiency!
I’ve certainly come a very long way since first starting down this journey of custom wooden banks, just so much streamlining all around, I can’t imagine how much I’ve learned this year transforming the idea of SandboxRanch.com from digital to physical… this was just done in February of 2022!
After one side is cleaned-up and evened-out, it’s time to flip the slab and mill flat and parallel the other side of this poplar chunk of wood that will be transformed into a variety of custom combination banks among a few other things.
The first step is adding a chamfer to the banks that want them, I’ve grown quite fond of this process, it double checks placement and makes sure that what I programmed is true to what will be produced at SandboxRanch.com.
There doesn’t seem like there is much on this laminated poplar slab but you have to keep in mind, unlike the previous production runs I’ve done where most of the custom letter banks and wooden shape banks are 8″ tall, this one has a mix of 12″ tall individual letters and 10″ tall custom combination banks, so the scales are deceiving.
Each production run has a lot of additional tweaks performed onto my source code that churns out these custom wooden letter banks, custom combination banks are just the fruits of those labors as now I can easily combine all of what I made endlessly.
When it comes to making custom banks, the journey has been long but now I have so much in the rear view mirror that it’s fun to see the progress that’s been documented since then – I still have a tremendous amount of ideas that I want to play with, these custom combination banks are only the beginning of what SandboxRanch.com can offer!
This production run produced the absolute best banks that have ever left the shop, and each time I make another run, a few additional changes are done and the whole cycle is repeated with better and better results at SandboxRanch.com.
This is the aspect of custom bank manufacturing that I’ve grown to relish, as with CNCROi.com, most of what I do is one-off, meaning there is little room for optimization and improving code through production but when it comes to a product I manufacture at the shop for SandboxRanch.com, each run presents additional opportunities to improve upon the last.
In the image below, you can get an idea of the scale of the custom combination banks and the bigger 12″ tall banks, those two “Ds” are actually the typical 8″ tall banks we make at SandboxRanch.com.
Taking a look at this production run of custom combination banks and bigger wooden banks, you can further see just how much of a different size plays in how much storage these custom banks can offer, as an additional reference of scale, that board is 40″ wide!
I started off with custom red oak banks because they were the hardest to produce, and the square shape is also more challenging, all the lessons I learned from that were applied to the rounded banks library.
Now only has SandboxRanch.com gotten a jointer (yesterday) but I also got a little bandsaw that will hopefully mean the end of my life using a jigsaw cutting these out, it isn’t the massive bandsaw I was hoping for but a hold-me-over until I do.
As with everything else at SandboxRanch.com, if I’m doing a new size or shape, I always do a test using paper or cardboard to make sure everything fits as it should, whether it’s custom combination banks or shapes.
Above is paper that I had laying around and below is cardboard, literally anything can be used to test out the form, fit and function of custom letter banks made out of wood.
I’m so happy to have two distinct letter bank alphabets on SandboxRanch.com, of course, if you want to mix and match them to have your own custom combination banks, that’s no problem, as well as shapes and anything else you may have in mind.
Whether you want a custom bank for birthdays, anniversaries, novelty or whatever, we can make it just for you in any quantity and spec range you can come up with.
Below you can see how much of a difference a 12″ custom wooden letter bank is compared to it’s 8″ tall cousin, again, SandboxRanch.com isn’t just making the letter banks taller, but proportionally taller, which also makes them wider.
Mixing in the 12″ tall letter banks with the custom combination banks, you can see how much of a difference even going from 10″ to 12″ has, notice the B especially, that’s a huge amount of coinage that can go in there!
Here are some individual product shots of the 12″ poplar with black onyx screws, unlike Oak, Poplar paints and stains wonderfully, which is why I offer that on SandboxRanch.com as well… both are hardwoods by the way.
Making custom wooden banks is fun, it’s amazing how much equipment is required to make something so simple but that’s the fun part, so many different woodworking steps involved start to finish!
As I tell my customers, custom combination banks offer a whole new set of opportunities to have your very own unique bank for your kids, parents or entire family!
Being able to add color, backings, engraving and wow, you will really have a truly unique offering for birthdays and anniversaries, wedding and funerals!
Of course, I knew that eventually, a child would break the front acrylic of their custom bank, and as such, that’s why I offer polycarbonate (bullet proof glass) as an option, if your kid is an especially special one whose rough on his toys, give him a front window that’s impossible to break!
Polycarbonate is what they use to make safety glasses and it’s laminated in car windows to make them bullet proof, and of course, this offering is available even on custom combination banks at SandboxRanch.com.
As for the marking, it’s permanent, no inks, dyes or paints are used, we use our fiber laser source and permanently etch the surface black – and yes, you can have any color you want as long as it’s black.
Polycarbonate is optically clear as well, meaning the clarity is second to none and it’s more scratch resistant than acrylic.
Although most of the polycarbonate that we use in the shop is slated for industrial use, we do have fun with it for other unique applications as well.
Of course with these custom combination banks, I also did some testing using cardboard before cutting the more expensive acrylic, and yes, you aren’t limited to just clear acrylic neither with SandboxRanch.com, we got a whole bunch of different color options available with both painted and just etched options.
These custom combination banks really look amazing!
I have fun on the side designing banks that don’t even look like banks – here’s one I designed a long time ago and yes, I plan on releasing them on SandboxRanch.com eventually.
Of course, you can have these custom combination banks stacked vertically, horizontally, using more than just two shapes and letter combinations as well – absolute and total customization is no problem!
The reason I came-out with poplar as an option for these custom combination banks as well as everything else on SandboxRanch.com is stains, you don’t want to stain oak, it looks beautiful the way it is, but poplar is a more cost-effective hardwood that just loves paint and stains, so yes, yet another level of customization!
Want a custom bank? Contact us and shop online at SandboxRanch.com!
https://vimeo.com//746395236
