Total noob with a practicality question

[Sarge43]

I am actively saving for a carvewright and plan on purchasing one in the next few weeks. Having never worked with one, I have a question about whether this machine can accomplish one of the things I would like it to do.
I make pistol grips. They are down to 1/4" thick at times and go up from there. Can I affix these to a board and use the carvewright machine to carve things like initials, small relief items etc into the grips? Can it scan and go with the curvature of the grips surface? I figure I'd ask some experts, and who should know better than the users here?
Thank you in advance for your help.
Sarge

Edit: I guess I should state that I plan on purchasing the scanning probe with the machine. Bet you already figured that out though.

[cnsranch]

Search "pistol"

You'll get a ton of info.

[badger]

Its possible to scan the type of grips you want and carve new grips instead of carving something onto an already made grip.

You would use the scanned grip as your pattern.

[sweliver]

Once you get the hang of it you can practically place anything anywhere. I've scanned a whole bunch of stuff from doll house sized ballisters to kayak paddle blades. All came out great. Once in Designer, add text, other ptn's, etc.

Right now I'm busy designing pen-type boxes with a double dome surface on the lid plus one or more ptn's and/or texts. You just have to experiment with the carve region depth and height to get the look you're looking for. Carve a couple practice pieces to make sure the final output is how it appeared in designer, tweak, and voila. btw your first practice carve can be in draft or good. Best adds another half hour at least for complex carves. It's more important for me to see how all the elements are positioned vs how smooth or exact each ptn or text carves. So use cheap wood and lower quality for the test carves.


sw

[buzzard01]

I am seriously considering buying the CW in the next few weeks. My wife owns a long arm quilting machine (14ft long) and I make templates out of plywood. Then she can lay the template onto the long arm table, place a stylus in the routed grove and follow the pattern and it sews that pattern on the quilt. The problem with the CW 'may' be that because of height (space) limitations below the actual sewing machine, I can only use material 1/4" thick. So, I buy 8ft long, 1/4" plywood to use for the templates. The final template is 8ft long, 13" wide and 1/4" thick. I read in this forum that if the material is less than 3/4" thick, then you need to use a jig? Would I have to make a jig the size of the plywood dimensions mentioned above? Not sure that is even possible. FYI, I am not a woodworker, just a novice that has been using a plunge router. Thanks.

[ChrisAlb]

I am seriously considering buying the CW in the next few weeks. My wife owns a long arm quilting machine (14ft long) and I make templates out of plywood. Then she can lay the template onto the long arm table, place a stylus in the routed grove and follow the pattern and it sews that pattern on the quilt. The problem with the CW 'may' be that because of height (space) limitations below the actual sewing machine, I can only use material 1/4" thick. So, I buy 8ft long, 1/4" plywood to use for the templates. The final template is 8ft long, 13" wide and 1/4" thick. I read in this forum that if the material is less than 3/4" thick, then you need to use a jig? Would I have to make a jig the size of the plywood dimensions mentioned above? Not sure that is even possible. FYI, I am not a woodworker, just a novice that has been using a plunge router. Thanks.

All you would need is a carrier board and some double sided carpet tape to stick the 1/4 to it.

You can get glued pine panels at Home Depot or Lowes up to 24" wide. For your needs I'd get a 14 or 16 wide panel and rip it to the 13" you need for your template.

If you finished template length is 8 feet, get a 10 foot panel so you can cut it to at least 8 foot 7 inches to stay under rollers.

Easy to do and the CW would have no problems.

[buzzard01]

Perfect, thank you so much for the quick reply.

[Sarge43]

Thanks for the answers on my question. I searched for "pistols" and will admit, I got a little lost in some of the terminology and steps, but I don't have a machine yet to apply it to. I'm sure they will make more sense when I can actually look at the machine and apply the instructions.
Thanks again!
Sarge

[mtylerfl]

...I read in this forum that if the material is less than 3/4" thick, then you need to use a jig? ...

Hello,

The machine will accept material 1/2" thick (or more) without using a jig/sled. Just thought I would make that correction.