Well we left off with our veterans appreciation plaques sanded to 150 in the last blog, and here we are with some images that will bring us to the completion of the project. After I sanded all the awards to 150 I continued on through the grits up to 600, I was happy with the burnished sheen the plaques were developing. And I decided enough was enough, time for some finish! I would typically mix my own wipe on oil, but I had a can of Watco Danish Oil sitting around and decided to use it, and not only did I have a nice can of handy wipe on oil at the ready, and also had a wonderful helper who was ready with a brush!

My son Jeroid volunteered to brush a liberal coat of oil on the awards, and he had a blast doing it, as there really wasn't any caution he had to worry about, just slop it all on, wait a few minutes, and wipe it off. Easy peasy!

Jeroid did a wonderful job, below are the award blanks all oiled up, and wiped down, they look wonderful I think. All 32 of them.

After a couple days of letting the two coats of oil set up, I always love to wax my projects. I swear the project just looks far better with a coat of wax. The wax does a couple things, it creates an even sheen where just leaving a finished project with finish, leaves unleveled and differing sheens of finish, this is that final stage that I feel you must perform, before most finished projects are actually finished. I used the lighter Johnsons Paste wax for the light wood award blanks, and I used the darker maple Liberons Black Bison finishing wax for the darker woods.

This project came down to the last few hours before the big event was ready to start, literally I was working on these the night before the big event, and I was applying the labels and medallions the next morning, the day of the event. I was so crammed for time, I decided to not install picture hanger hardware on the back of these awards, instead I opted to bore a 1/4" hole to make way for a nail on a wall. It actually turned out very well, it looked pretty neat to have a nice bored hole for hanging, instead of shiny hardware for hanging. I chucked up the 1/4" Forstner in my Drill Press, and clamped some guides so all I had to do was line up each award before boring, I simply set the award between the guides, and up to the fence. Each one was bored the exact same way.

Since this was a last minute decision to bore holes instead of using hanging hardware, I had already waxed the blanks, so I had to be really careful of the face of the award blanks, so I laid a piece of cloth on the drill press table to protect the face of the award blanks.

The timing could not have been better, true to Morris form, I called in an order of service award medallions just days before to be shipped to us from the east coast, and they arrived two days before the event, this was too close. I would not have had time to adjust for errors if anything arrived short, damaged, or otherwise. I was happy to see everything came in on time, and in one piece.

Image below is the service medallions that were to be installed on the awards.

Anady's Trophies and Engraving (sponsor partner of this project) also supplied the borders for the 2" service medallions to be inserted into.

See image below, the medallions are inserted into the border provided by Anady's. The borders really set the service medallions off beautifully. Thanks Anady's!!!

Also provide by Anadys Trophies and Engravings are the drop dead beautiful engravings they provided. These engravings are done on very high quality brass material, only the best for our veterans.

The image below are the finished awards, I sat at our coffee table and applied the name labels, and the medallions, and stacked them two levels deep. There are 32 in total. I also made up the programs for our daughters club event. Those can be seen at the upper left, they turned out nice too.

Our two daughters love our veterans, they volunteer countless hours performing local community service and we take them and their club out of town to help at Homes for Our Troops events. They have the burning desire of volunteerism in their hearts. We are so proud of these girls, and their little brother too, he is coming up the rear with the same volunteer ethics for community service and compassion to our fellow man.

This is the last image I took before I loaded the awards and the girls up in our family wagon and took them all to the big event this last Friday. The event was a hit, the school district veterans had a great time, and it was all just perfect.

Our younger daughter (left) and treasurer of the Patriot Tigers High School Club, and our oldest daughter to the right, the founder and President of Patriot Tigers. These girls are my crown jewels of my life, both Mrs. Morris and myself could not be more proud.

The next blog installation will highlight the actual event, it was a total hit, the school district staff were talking about it all week long. Stay tuned!

WOOPS! Last second images I forgot to install, as seen below.

And once again, thank you to our sponsors of this wonderful project, for without each them, we could not have gotten this off the ground.