Keith wrote:
If you're going to varnish over the vinyl, why bother putting it on a
plastic sheet? Why not just stick the vinyl letters to the wood and
varnish the whole thing?


Varnishing over the vinyl tints the lettering, and the edges of the
letters want to "lift" after the first coat. To build up the varnish,
it is important to sand between coats and that brings you back around
full circle to the difficulty of sanding around lettering. For obvious
reasons, you would not want to sand the vinyl lettering.