My carving machine has sat unused for about 8 years. It had 30 minutes carving time on it when I decided to do something with it the end of January from when I unpacked it and did a test carving to make sure it worked when I got it home.

I wanted to create something special for my wife for Valentines Day, which didn't happen. In the process of this I decided to also do a copy of my project for my 95 year old Aunt who raised me. I started out with one thing in mind and did carve a nice carving out of spruce that was about 8" x 10" with a deep recess carved out in the front so the heart and roses pattern I purchased on the Pattern Depot would stand proud in it. The carving turned out well, but fuzzy - but after a couple of days the carving became bowed as someone else has posted about having trouble with here as well.

So I thought I would create a wooden plate shape in a 2 sided carving sort of like the collector plates that use to be fairly popular. I created a 10" diameter plate that I am right proud of - then blended the hearts and roses pattern into the bottom flat area in the center.
All carvings done in red oak. The first one done on the rear side, and about 75% done on the front side, when suddenly the carving started carving deeper and ruined the front side carving. Second attempt produced a fairly decent carving, but showed faint carving lines across the front that just didn't please me, even after trying to sand them out. I couldn't get them all due to the detail of the carving. I used best bit optimization and best carving upload to the card.


The next 2 attempts were on the same carving. The machine stopped carving after 2 hours on the back side and kept telling me to close the cover. I was unable to complete the first attempt and I replaced the QC chuck with the Carvetight chuck and the A907 kit after working on the phone with tech support trying to determine why the cover switch stopped working. Even jumping the switch with wire wouldn't allow the carving to proceed. Anyway about $400 in new hardware and tried to save the carving by creating a region that had 0.0 depth over what already carved and was surprised that worked really well. Carving was within a few thousands of inch of being perfecting aligned with the first attempt. On the front side there were 2 areas that are just below the surface of the board that didn't carve at all. This could be salvaged with a Dremel tool and a little hand work. The salvage attempt was 7 hours 45 minutes total machine running time. Part produced was useable but not perfect. I gave that one to my son-in-law yesterday to finish for my oldest daughter - while carving another one again yesterday.

I have carved about $75 in red oak to date trying to make the perfect gift for my love. While the salvaged one will be a nice one after some hand work, I choose to attempt again. Just the perfectionist in me I guess. I want to give her the very best that I am able. Pictures are of the #5 carving finished about 7:30 PM last night as it was removed from the caving machine. I still have to cut it out and finish it, but the carving quality is superb. Smooth with no faint lines to be seem. This time carved on Optimum quality which produces excellent quality results.


Having installed the dust collection system allowed me to work on daughters 2005 Venture van trying to help son-in-law replace the sparkplugs on the rear side ( glad it is not my vehicle!) which we worked on in my driveway in front of the shop porch where the carving machine and DC blower where running.

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The back side is carved out deeply around the outer edge and tapers to a flat 6" diameter center with a small rectangle carved to hang this from. The edge is about 0.1" thick around the circumference. 1"x12" oak board 19" long.

I'm proud of this! And it seems it took a long time to get here, but I think now there are some good things coming.

I intend to enhance this further with my laser engraving machine. I will post pictures of the finished plate. I hope I get that right - I'd hate to have this turn out so good, then mess it up trying to laser engrave on it.