A Decorative Element

I wanted to give my smoker a little pizzaz so I decided to name it and put that name on the front door.  I decided to call it "Smokin' Hot" and googled the internet searching for images with similar words.  I found this photo of a sign.

I printed it out, full page.

And then cut the letters out.

I then found a roll of roof flashing and cut a piece of that to work with.

I took each letter, placed it on the flashing, and marked the outside of it with a marker.

Then I cut out the letters.

With the door removed from the cabinet, and laying on the work bench, I played around a little bit until I found a layout I liked.

Using a propane torch I proceeded to burn the wood around the letters.

And doing so, I messed up.  I wanted to burn on the wood not covered by the metal letters but made a mistake of keeping the flame on top of the letters for too long.  This caused the wood under the letters, although not exposed to the flame directly, to still heat up and burn.

As you can see in the above image the 'H' is way to dark.  :/  I was not happy about this outcome and it bugged me for several days.  Through a suggestion my dad made I realized I could just sand the entire area and try again.  I sanded just enough so that some of the burns remained - enough so that I could properly relocate the letters - and tried again.  This time I made quicker sweeping motions with the flame and didn't pause it over any one area.  Here are the results from that effort. 

I was much happier with these results.