This was my first attempt
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I was getting stars just like this at first. I thought it was a problem with my wood too. Turns out it was the image I was using for the stars. I ended up making one in inkscape. I basically made a star, then duplicated it about 100 times, I lined them up tip to tip, then just deleted the ones I didn’t need. It squared up nicely. Your flags look good though, and will only get better the more you do.
What stain are you using for the black? All I could find close to me was a oil based, and the smell was horrid🙄
Thanks. I spent some time learning how to make what I want in inkscape and fusion. I think the first couple were an image I pulled from wikipedia, but the second picture came from a file I made from the official dimensions.
All my colors are cheap acrylic paint, the 50 cent kind from Walmart. You can really make it behave differently depending on how you thin it, and by spraying I can control the color depth and opacity. Once I seal it, it still looks really good.
I took the black and red flag to a craft show last weekend and got tons of complements. I just wish I could keep the unions straight long enough to get my stars in it and not twist so bad I get gaps between the stripes.
Are you using separate pieces for the union, or just 13 strips total? I use a water based Minwax stain, they come out really nice with a satin clear coat.
13 strips. I considered taking a separate piece for the union after looking at the bottom row of my first flag, but I don’t think I like the way they look.
Maybe I should spend some time making a fixture to put it all together like you did there. I did just get a couple new clamps.
The jig definitely helps, it keeps things nice and square too.
I did a little tutorial for making an American Flag in Inkscape using the clone tool. Understanding how the translation works with cloning can automate it very well.
And for folks who need a vector of the flag, here are several versions.
Engrave American Flag.zip (79.4 KB)
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That is awesome! I have been wanting a good template, but I’m not all that good at inkscape.
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I swapped over to a shield and uno, and made a couple more carvings. I gotta say, GRBL seems way easier to work with vs marlin. Not that marlin is difficult, but as I’m sure you guys know, there can be some hiccups sometimes. Lol
The red one is only about 200x200mm square, so the letters are quite small.
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The flags look great! As a veteran, I might have to make one of these for the house. Thanks for the inspiration.
Thanks you for your service!
Great looking stuff!!! Anyone ever run into any issues with the Vbits and stars not being 100% same due to the wood being slightly cupped or warped?
Thank you! And Yes. That sucls when it happens. Not all is lost though, when that happens I just cut a shape on the flag to avoid the bad stars. Texas, punisher, eagle etc. I have found the best approach is to glue the strips up for 2 hours, and carve the stars immediately after. Seems like the wood cups less. Also the trick is befire you glue them up, make sure the grain is alternation so they pull in opposite directions, vs pulling in the same direction.
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Check out my first attempt above. I fought with it a lot, and didn’t get to a solution. IamSandX has some good advice above and in response to me, but I’ve been occupied with the lowrider conversion, so I haven’t tried again yet. Also got some other things to replace it in my lineup that I should be able to make faster for about the same cost and sell for about the same as well, maybe more.
It’s one of those things that people post on social media and everybody talks about how great it is, but very few talk about those damned vbits unless you ask them, and then EVERYBODY has had that issue at least once. You have good company.
So over the past couple days I’ve been trying different techniques, mainly because I hate inconsistency. Lowes has the 16x36 panels, very similar to what a lot of guys are using to make these flags. It’s pretty damn straight, and it makes the job go by quite a bit quicker. I also learned a couple things in ESTLCAM that I didn’t realize would really help me, and that was the ability to save the project, not just save the gcode. I’m sure everyone else already knew this, but somehow it slipped my attention 
I bring this up because of my new technique where I’m not only carving the stars, but the white stripes to. Basically it’s just saving me time from having to resize everytime I import something into ESTLCAM. Below is what I’ve done with this pre-glued panel already, I still have to carve the stars and eagle, but it’s looking good so far.
And also a preview of a new one I’m working on too.
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