The production series are made of cherry with walnut and holly trim. The individual plaques is walnut with sycamore plugs, inlaid in shallow arcs on the four corners.
I've recently completed another plaque for a retiring Sergeant Major. I went a different route with his and, tiring of engraved plates, took the blank to a guy I know that has an industrial laser engraving machine in his garage. WOW!! I'm never using brass plates again!! It's in the finish stage right now, so no photos yet. I'm also dealing with clouding laquer, which is really irritating. I hadn't used laquer in so long that I had forgotten that, in high humidity, it clouds up and turns a milky white. So, I've had to repeatedly sand it down and am now going to use a water-based gloss spray polyurethane. Shouldn't have the cloudy problem anymore. I'm not a big fan of poly as I much prefer either tung oil and beeswax or laquer, but I'm on a deadline and I can't play around with this anymore. I'll post photos of it when complete.
