Our grandson Aidan, was turning one years old and for his birthday we wanted to do something a little different. Now don't get me wrong here because we did the normal birthday present toys that a one year old loves. But the icing on the cake was a T-shirt signed by all kinds of pro drag racing drivers. This was fun to do and all the pro drivers are more than happy to sign whatever you bring them: model cars, hats, the shirt that you're wearing, etc; which is way cool in itself.

To display the T-shirt we bought a large shadow box and placed the shirt inside it. Then it hit me, how is anyone going to read all those names? I mean everyone has a unique signature and trying to read some of them can be challenging at times. What we needed was a way to display all the names so it would be easy to tell who signed his shirt that day. What I came up with was an engraved piece of aluminum that had all the names on it.
 

I used a CNC milling machine to engrave all the names in a piece of anodized aluminum. The raw aluminum makes a nice contrast with the red color making it easy to read. Turns out that Tony Shumacher, Robert Hight and Mike Edwards were the 2009 Champions that year in their respective classes.
 

Here you can see my wife getting Don 'The Snake' Prudhomme's autograph. I never dreamed of getting Don's signature that day, I mean it never crossed my mind but once I saw him walking around I told my wife to ask him for it. The reason I wanted her to ask is because he might tell me that he doesn't have time but for a female the odds would be much better. Well it worked so I stayed out of the way and let her do the talking.
 

Side note: In case you're wondering what those letters and numbers mean on his shirt? That's short for "Nitromethane" which is a type of fuel some of the pro drivers use. And when that fuel ignites, the flames come out of the exhaust pipes at over 10 feet long. The only engine that's louder is probably the space shuttle taking off. Yeah it's really that load and a lot of fun!!!