So the design started out as a sort of sugar skull meets Vader kind of look and morphed into a layered maple veneer glue up on top of walnut to give it some reflective pop without going for a can of white paint.
First, the maple layer is too thick.
Second, the maple glue up did not go as planned because pieces end up popping off all over the place.
While this is a failure that I’m restarting in about 10 minutes, I’m going to add it to my office wall collection and call it “Abstract Vader after a bad day at the office”
Came back at it with a 1-in board of full walnut instead, I think a polyurethane or polycrylic might make it reflective and shiny in the right places.
Had to carve this one twice… for some reason on this piece it correctly set the Z-height, but then for some reason lost 2mm somewhere and air-carve the entire first layer. I’m sure it’s something I messed up in the gcode. Did a manual offset to drop it 2mm and re-ran the program and it worked fine.
All of the carving was done with a SpeTools 1/2-in 90° V bit and the piece was cut out using the IDC Woodcraft 1/4-in Beast flat end mill.
I will confess that having my own jointer and planer really helped for all of my projects to this weekend. It’s the first time really putting time into assembling rough cut lumber into wider boards or sheets.
I did learn another new thing though, my SpeTool 60° and 90° V-bits are non-conductive, so my z-axis calibration totally fails when carving with them. I had to do a manual Z calibration and then just stick the magnet to the plate and start the file to bypass the G38.2 command… I guess I could have just edited the g-code to remove that section too.
