Unlike laser cutters, plasma cutters don’t leave you with a perfectly clean-cut piece after the cut. The tradeoff for being able to cut through much tougher material is the slag that it leaves behind, making the raw cut quite dangerous.  What it does do, however, is leave you with many different directions to proceed with in post processing.  In our case, we cut shapes which were quite detailed. Hence, we had to decide whether we wanted to compromise on the detail when filing them down to yield a very smooth surface, or conversely to be more careful and try to preserve as much of the detail as possible while still removing all the slag.

I chose to cut out Kentucky, and used a range of tools to prep it to the state that is shown below:

 

I first took out a fine file with a large surface area to grind down both faces and take off the overhanging slag from the edges. Since the southern portion of the border is quite flat, I was able to use the same file to smoothen the edges. For the norther border, however, I used the Dremel tool to do so.  The range of different heads that it comes with makes it possible to target areas of different sizes and shapes, and thus was effective in smoothing out its ridges.  Finally, I used the sandblaster machine to apply a smooth, grainy coat to the piece.  This would further smoothen out the ridges, and provide a nice even surface for the spray paint to hold onto.

I attempted to use some of the wooden stencils to apply designs to the piece. while some parts turned out quite well, others were shifted by the thrust of the spray paint and thus did not turn out as crisp as planned.

 

 

With nothing else possible to do, I used a mid-grit sandpaper to try to sand off as much of the paint as possible, but more importantly make the surface as even as possible. After quite an effort, here was the result:

 

With a flat surface, I decided to abandon the design idea and use a few different colors to create a gradient across the piece. Those colors together are the first thing I think of when Kentucky comes to mind.

 

To add a bit more detail to my vision of Kentucky, I wanted to create the bird’s eye view of the farmland you see when landing in the airport. By first drawing how I would divide up the land, I used masking tape to only make those lines visible and then used a metallic brown spray paint to depict the fence-like divisions.

 

While I could have sanded it and repainted and sanded and repainted and then provided a coat to give it an even smoother, glossy finish, I was very happy with the way the color and texture worked out on the first iteration of painting it, so I left it as it was.  I look forward to continue learning what works and what doesn’t.