Challenge

[Chippygeoff]

I had a very profitable and interesting craft fair yesterday. Sold lots of different items and at the end of the day had a dozen orders or so. One order was for two no parking signs, never had an order for these before, one order was for a wedding plaque, and i get lots of these. I had the usual orders for various name signs and then I was approached by a lovely couple who work for help for heroes. I am sure we all remember the wonderful display of poppies at the tower of London. The couple bought two of the metal ones and they wanted them mouted on wooden plaques but it is not as quite straight forward as it looks.

The poppies are in bits at the moment. The poppy heads are 130 mm across and the metal stems are 5mm thick. My initial thoughts are for rectangular plaques apex 400 mm long and 230 wide, as there is a booklet that needs to go on the plaques as well and this measures 210 mm x 140 mm. The booklet is the main problem at the moment because the finished plaques will not have screw holes in them so they can be screwed to a wall but will have a D ring hanger on the backs, this means that when it is mounted on the wall the top of each plaque will be proud of the wall by about 15 mm and the bottoms will obviously be touching the wall. I thought I would make a narrow shelf for the booklets to stand on but have a lip on them as well. It is then a matter of working out the angle for the narrow shelf so the booklet does not fall off when the plaques are on the wall.

To hold the poppies in place my initial thought was to make two decorative blocks, the top one with a hole all the way through and the bottom one with the same size hole but only drilled so far into the wood so the end of the stem is supported and the narrow shelf will be below the bottom block.. I was wondering if anyone could come up with a better idea.

 

[finneyb]

Rare earth magnets for the poppy?

Brian

 

[finneyb]

Two pieces of dowel to hold the booklet. ie the booklet rests on the dowel pegs
Slotted as required to get the booklet vertical.

Where do I send the invoice for this consultancy design work?

Brian

 

[Mechanism Man]

I work in a printing and framing shop in Norfolk, and we have framed several of these since Christmas - they always cause a little head scratching because nobody wants the same thing twice!
We frame them into deep glass fronted box frames (a little like medal framing), but make use of the hole in the centre of the poppy to mount it carefully to the back board with a wide enough nut and bolt - the head needs to be quite flat so that you can make use of the black disc and stick that over the top of the head to conceal it, and you'd probably have to recess the nut on the back. Be warned though, the poppy is almost certainly ceramic and not metal, so handle with care as it will break!
As for the little certificate, we use double sided sticky foam board to mount them (5mm thick) - cut it smaller than the certificate all the way round by about 10mm and then when you stick it to your wooden plaque it will appear to 'float' off the surface, it looks very effective and stops any problems with it falling off.
As for hanging it, why not use the same system that they use in pubs to stop pictures falling on the drinkers? They use little brass brackets that screw into the back of the frame and leaves you with a lug sticking out from behind the frame to screw through to fix it to the wall - one on either side is the norm. This leaves you with a secure plaque that is earthquake proof and going nowhere.
Have fun anyway, and good luck!

 

[Chippygeoff]

Many thanks guys for all your replies and comments. Have now got everything sorted.