Gift for granddaughter

[jpeter14]

I saw a project that someone posted with these horses done with layed wood.
I have a granddaughter who loves and has a couple of horses and is married to a cowboy, so this was my take on it for her birthday. It is 1/4" poplar on 1/2" paduak. about 14" long by 8" high. Got patterns from the CW depot.

[eromran]

Your project turned out great. it is easy to see this was not your first but i have not seen much on here of what you have done . You should definitely show more even if you don't think they are up to par. Let others see. Once again that looks great thanks for sharing.

[dchris4691]

That is a beautiful job with and a beautiful finish too. well done.

[LollyWood]

JP Buddy, that is Beautiful. Well done my friend.

[yellowdog]

Great job! Did you carve the horses and rope and then glue them on or something else? It looks very nice.:)

[jpeter14]

Hi Yellowdog, I planed the paduak to 1/2" and gluded 1/4" popular onto it and carved the patterns a little bit more that 1/4" to the paduak surface.

[yellowdog]

That is a great idea. I would have never in a million years thought of that clever idea. Then again, I am not that smart! Next project for sure!
Thanks for the tip.:D

[Betty Woodall]

She should love the gift. It is truely beautiful. Thanks for sharing.... Bw

[DocWheeler]

jpeter14,

That is a great project and well done. I have been practicing on how best to do this. What depths do you use? I found that if I set the pattern depth just a tad less than the thickness of the top board thickness and then set the carve-region to a little deeper than the top-board thickness it works well.
That way the carving detail remains AND most of the glue is cut away.
For 1/4" top-board I set the pattern to 0.242 and the carve region to 0.268 or there-about.
Do you do something similar?

[jpeter14]

Hi Doc,
I did increase the carve depth a little on both, but not enough, as had to scrape and sand some of the glue off. It was my first attempt along with the coaster that I am working on.

[cnsranch]

Hey, Doc -

I'm gonna try and take you to task on this one, 'cause I don't know what I'm talking about. :rolleyes:

Take a look at Logo and Logo1 attached. Logo has the pattern set at .25 as well as the carve region. If you zoom in close, the pattern flows nicely into the region.

Logo1 has the settings you recommend, but if you zoom in close, the pattern doesn't flow, it has jagged edges. Won't it carve that way?

Wouldn't I be better off leaving the mpc unchanged, and make the top board .242 thick? The machine will then carve below the pattern into the region,cleaning up glue, etc?

That said, getting the board to .242 is tough at best without a wide drum sander, but so long as it is somewhat thinner than .25, I should be ok, right?

[DocWheeler]

jpeter14,

Sorry about having the wrong name in my previous post.

As you now know, as seen in your attachments, it is difficult to retain detail.

I'm glad that I went to download ieSpell since cnsranch posted while I was doing that.

cnsranch and jpeter14: If you look at the foal's legs in jp's coaster attachment - that is what happens when you don't fiddle with the depths. Let me use the foal's legs as an example.
As you both probably do this, I'll just state it for new-carvers - after you create the mpc, you can reduce the board size in order to get the edge of the board to intersect any particular area and then rotate the board to see the "cross-section". Now while watching the cross-section, decrease the pattern depth and watch the leg rise away from the background. It even gets more depth when the carve-region is set deeper.

Now to answer cnsranch, The glue will fill the wood grain a little and there will probably be a thin layer of just plain glue despite heavy clamping. The trick is to get the glue layer just below the bottom of the pattern and just above the depth of the carve-region so the glue layer is removed when you carve it.

The problems that I found were 1) if you don't raise the pattern, you will lose pattern edges (as shown with the foal's legs), 2) if you don't lower the carve region, you will have a lot of glue to scrape/sand off.

The glue and glue-soaked wood will form the transition between the two types of wood when sanded, and yes you can have areas where there is a small "step" - but that looks better than the foal's legs disappearing. Been-there-done-that!

I'm at work and can not see the mpcs, sorry - yes I did retire in May,but I want more toys!

Just reread cnsranch's post and did not respond to all of it. Subtract the 1/128th from the top board's thickness and add 1 or two 1/128ths to the top board's thickness for the carve depth. I used the .242 and .26? because I carve a .25" region to glue the second board-type into so that the rest of the mpc is still the background board type. Since all depths are from the surface of the original board, I don't care if the secondary board is the right thickness.

[DocWheeler]

cnsranch,

Here is an example (http://www.carvewright.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8529) that I posted the other day of the same pattern.