I have a bare section of wall behind my computer desk that just needed something. Growing up a comic book fan, I thought it would be a pretty cool idea to fill this particular wall with some superhero emblems. I had already made a Superman shield, so this time I thought it would be appropriate to make a Batman emblem. In fact, my plan is to fill the entirety of this blank space with Justice League emblems first and then possibly expand it to more DC characters as well. I guess we'll see where this all ends up. Anyhow, here is how we made the Batman Emblem. You can watch the video or check out the step-by-step.

Materials You'll Need

Wood of your choice (we used walnut)
Epoxy Resin (any will work, we used Famowood Glaze Coat)
Acrylic Paint (we used blue)
Petroleum Jelly or Mold Release
Finish (we used wipe-on polyurethane)
3M Poster Tabs

Tools Used

Scroll Saw
Band Saw
Drill
Chisel
Hot Glue Gun
Disc Sander
Random Orbital Sander

Step 1: Prepare the Template

The template started out with an actual version of the Batman logo. I traced over it in Inkscape using the bezier tool and then exported the line drawing to paint.net to better size it for what I wanted. I chose to make each of our emblems about 8" wide and roughly the same height, depending on the emblem.

I cut out the template and glued it to the piece of wood using a spray on glue that has a temporary-like hold. You could use a glue stick as well.

The wood we used for this particular emblem was walnut. The wood was a little shy of 3/4" thick.

A few tabs were hand-drawn onto the template to give it some stability.

Step 2: Cutting the Emblem

Before I started cutting the interior of the emblem I drilled a few holes in the blank spaces to allow for the insertion of the scroll saw blade. Then, I cut out the interior, making sure that I left the tabs in place that I had hand-drawn in previously. If you are not sure how to use a scroll saw, there are a bunch of videos on YouTube that can help you out. If you don't have a scroll saw, you could also use a coping saw.

The outside of the emblem was cut out on the bandsaw.

Each of the tabs that I had left in place were chiseled down to roughly half the thickness of the wood. These will be covered up in another step.

Step 3: Prepping the Emblem for Resin

There are a ton of different ways you can do this. Some work better than others and some make life more difficult. Unfortunately, we chose the more difficult route this time around.

Basically, we just laid the emblem on a piece of hardboard and then glued around the perimeter, attempting to create a sealed barrier. We also added in some petroleum jelly as a mold release agent. As you'll see in the next step, both ideas had their flaws this time around.

We've had great success in the past using both of these methods, but for some reason it didn't work out so well this time. This might work differently for you, however. You could also use wax paper as a backer instead of petroleum jelly or you could break down and just buy some mold release. You could also clamp the emblem to the backer board instead of hot gluing the barrier.

Step 4: Mixing and Pouring the Resin

The resin we often use is called Famowood Glaze Coat. It's not commonly used for this sort of thing, but we have fallen in love with it as of late. Mostly we've fallen in love with the price. It is actually a bar top / table epoxy, but it works great as a casting / pouring resin as well. It is a two-part resin that is mixed in a 1:1 ratio. We added a bit of blue acrylic paint to the resin to give it the color we wanted. Here's some more info on mixing the Famowood since it's a bit different than some epoxy resins. Mixing Famowood

Pouring is pretty easy to grasp. Just pour it slowly and make sure the tabs are fully covered. You may also need to pop some surface bubbles using a lighter. Just hover the flame close to the resin, but don't touch it and the bubbles should pop.

Once you're satisfied with how the resin looks, you'll want to let it set and cure for 12-24 hours before you release it.

Step 5: Releasing and Finishing

If you should have some trouble releasing the emblem from the backer board and/or some of it sticks to the back because of seepage; don't worry. Just tear away what you can and sand off what's left. If you used MDF or hardboard as the backer board sanding shouldn't be an issue. That stuff sands down fairly quick with some 60-80 grit sand paper.

If you didn't have any trouble releasing it, then all you need to do is clean it up a bit. Some of the resin may have seeped a bit. You can removed that with a scraper or craft knife or you could even sand it.

You can add a finish if you like. We did, just to make the wood a bit darker and give it a bit of a shine. We used a wipe-on polyurethane.

Step 6: Hanging and Enjoying

The best way we have found to hang something like this on the wall, was to use the removable 3M poster tabs. These emblems aren't very heavy and they seem to work really well. We use three of them per emblem.

If you have the right tools, this project doesn't take much time at all. Plus it's a great addition to any Batman or comic book fan's collection.

We hope you enjoyed this DIY project and the video that goes along with it.

If you have any questions or comments please let us know, we'd be more than happy to help you out.