Three Birds Tiling

[bergerud]

One of my Math Dept. members is retiring after teaching for 50 years. She has been teaching students who were becoming elementary school teachers. I was directed to come up with a retirement present. She has written books on Escher tilings and so, this is what I came up with. It is based on (copied from) Escher's Three Birds of 1948.

I used many advanced Designer features: trace, puff, conform, centerline, path offset, and keyhole.

It is not quite done. In a few days I will wet sand and polish the lacquer.

[RogerB]

Wow very nice. Thanks for sharing.:p

[henry1]

Wow very nice. nice layout

[henry1]

berg you got private message

[mikemi]

Very, very nice. That will bring back many memories for her every time she looks at it.

Mike

[eelamb]

Dan, a really nice piece of art, she will love it.

[Canemaker]

Extremely nice use of the Escher's Three Birds of 1948. I have several Escher books and always wondered if they could be converted into carvings. Great work, she should enjoy this for life.

[oscarl48]

Dan, that is super cool.

[aokweld101]

That is really nice Dan, 50 yrs. of teaching the stories that she could tell ... She has my profound admiration for passing knowledge on... I know there are a few among us that wish we would of listened more.....

[zan29]

Beautiful Dan!

[bergerud]

Thanks everyone. Tiling has been on my list of things to try. The black bird is ebony, the doves are holley, and the cardinals are rosewood. The back is black walnut. I started by tracing a picture on a 1/64" snap grid.

She loves Escher and tiling so I am pretty sure she will like it.

[Gary Koval]

Dan,By far one of the best retirement gifts ever, beautiful...
Gary

[tcough3475]

Dan, that is a great award that will be treasured forever. The finish is fantastic! I've been considering doing something like this for intarsia projects. Seems like after I complete one on the scroll saw and give it as a gift, several people ask for a similar piece. I was thinking the CW would be perfect for this task as long as the individual pieces took in to account the limits of the bit radii when cutting them out. I've seen several projects in the store (wreaths) that group pieces, but I'm thinking of using a wide variety of wood selections to complete projects.
I saw your second post on this thread of your work in progress and was curious of how your using the individual vectors, as well as how you did the piece. One of the projects I'm considering duplicates an image and involves an eagle in flight. I don't want to create all the feathers, and your technique looks like it might work for what I have in mind. If you don't mind sharing your process, I (and I'm sure others) would appreciate learning from the master!

[bergerud]

The birds share vectors. What I did was draw all the individual shared segments once on a snap grid (two point beziers). Then I made each bird by copying and pasting the pieces together. This gives the birds with exactly the same edges. The vertices had to be changed to free so the segments could be connected without going all tangent. After that, I have the bird outlines that all fit together in Designer. There are problems with the bit radius as you say. Next time, I will radius the corners. In the end, I had to do too much "fitting". This was my first try at this and I plan to try this again.

[ktjwilliams]

Holy Mackerel Dan !!!!

[edsingletary]

Wow, did I say wow? Wow

[xchief807]

Very nice. love it, great job

[rcdages]

Out standing !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bergerud]

Thanks. I finished wet sanding and polishing. I love lacquer. Now it does not look like it even has a finish. The birds just look like polished gem stones.

For those who have not tried using lacquer, you must try it. Lacquer is very forgiving to use and the results can be made like glass.

The finish is hard to do justice to with pictures. One must see it with reflected light.

[henry1]

Man that is nice I am going to try lacquer now ,,what you use to polish it with you do it by hand or,,,, and you have a private message

[bergerud]

I was using headlight polish! Normally one would use an auto cut wax. You can do it by hand or use a pad on a slow Dremel. You have to wet sand first with 400 - 600 grit to get it smooth.

[henry1]

I was using headlight polish! Normally one would use an auto cut wax. You can do it by hand or use a pad on a slow Dremel. You have to wet sand first with 400 - 600 grit to get it smooth.

Thank you much for the info