So thanks much for the help. I learned a lot - did not know about adjusting the gap of the donut and that worked fairly well but not completely. The problem I am running into is I need to have a stroke around the letters (actually "cbc") and when I try the various ways to accomplishing the cutout, I end up with a funky stroke because the letter is in pieces. I tried making the little overlapping pieces, and yes, that was quite fiddly, but I was thinking I could use those to make a vector mask and that might work? Vector masking, another thing I've got to go do a tutorial on. My brain thinks in Photoshop....