First carve is underway. I went with Aspen. Not a terribly hard wood but good for carving. So says the sales guy. I see a bit of burning - is there a way to alleviate that or is it ok / normal? I don’t mind from a finish standpoint - I’ll be touching things up a bit after that carve anyway. But if it’s a sign of a bad setup I should learn how to make it good. I’m afraid of burning up my bit halfway through this so I’ve ordered a spare just in case. But that’s two days away.
Well, it’s been an MPCNC kinda day here and I’ve once again learned a few things. Love that.
The full V Carve was great but at the end of the carve it just wasn’t what I was looking for - I just cut too deep and think it looks bad. and it makes the text a bit harder to read. I tried a very shallow test (3mm) and it was close so I fine tuned it and then made a separate end mill surfacing file - I’m doing pretty good with the tool changes today. I’m on the PC laptop right now and it’s a pain to get the photos off. I’ll edit this post in a sec and add the photos of the “too deep” and test. In about an hour and a half I should have the final panel (touch wood). Rheostat is available locally so in the next day or two I’ll go grab it.
Doing pretty good. Two tool changes so far and all is going according to plan. I’m giving the machine a break for the night but am confident I’ll get the other eight panels done tomorrow. These two line up spot-on!
I went with a shallow v carve on the outside of the letters, 3mm deep with a 6mm max width set. The leaves got carved up to 6mm deep inside and the outsides were carved just 4mm down. Then, using the artwork I built a set of files that were just the surfacing cut, to the middle of the v carves so I could clear out the negative space but not touch the v carved slopes of the leaves and letters. You can see the “buffer” showing around the lettering. I wanted it to stand off the surfaced background (hence only milling them down 3mm). There are a few islands left behind but I can pop them off with a Dremel easy.
The next step for the panels is to hit them with a MAP torch which will burn off any ‘fuzzies’ and darken the shadows and give some detail to the surfaced areas. Then a very light touch from a flap sander to bring the whites back to the tops of the leaves and text and then a coat of honey (urethane). They will be magnetically mounted to the carving.
And if I have time I’ll mill a second set of panels with just the leaves, no words so the school can introduce the character traits of St Nicholas one by one but the carving will still look “complete”.
Eight days to go until delivery…and I need three days for the three coats of urethane to cure. It’s gonna be a busy week in the shop…
