Dragon steam punk themed cabinet

[oscarl48]

Back to the drawing board. Quality control/supervisor/spouse has rejected the side panel design. She said the dragon looked either dead or puking so it is a no-go. Back to the drawing board. I've finished the front panel door design. I am super pleased and that did get a go. This weekend I will try to finish the second front leg and hopefully a panel or two.

[oscarl48]

Funky but really gives me the sci-fi steam punk vibe. The clock pattern enclosed.

Possibly a little scary in a dark room ala Chucky.

[oscarl48]

What is more steam punk than an octopus wrapped around a gear. Octopus pattern enclosed. Not exactly sure how I will use this but I am going to try real hard.

[oscarl48]

It was a great weekend. Got a good portion of the carvings done. Door carvings and one side panel done. I still need one side panel to finish and two accent panels (I am going to see if the octopus split in half looks any good). Still have not started thinking about the top. I am leaning to black walnut but still pretty open. Not sure if I want any carving on the top since this will be a working cabinet.

I finished the second dragon foot but in my excitement I glued the second one with the scales going up instead of down like the first foot. So now I have two different feet. They are separated enough that the eye shouldn't see that unless you pay real close attention. I am going with just use square feet in the back. The dragon feet take almost three hours to carve so the two front feet are good enough.

I did have some problems of my own making. One of the Z truck rollers came loose during the left door carving and chewed up the dragon carving. I recently tore the machine apart in trouble shooting an issue and managed to loosen up the bearing nut. It not horrible and I sanded a lot of it but still not really clean but the cabinet is supposed to look steam punk so fits in that its not supposed to be perfect.

Now with three full tool chest of equipment, did I have a flat wrench for the task. Of course not! So tried to keep an eye on it during the carving but still failed to catch it completely. I messed up a cool experiment that I was doing but since it was an experiment not too upset. It proved to be a pretty cool experiment that I will be redoing in the future. I finally found a flat wrench for my router table that didn't quite fit but I was able to wedge in there and tighten the nut. The last carving the face and cogs one came out great. The carving is right out of the CW with no sanding done yet.

[oscarl48]

A friend mentioned if I could carve a going away plaque with his command emblem and I told him I didn't know. So as an experiment I wanted to see how it would look as an inlay. This is where the problem I have been having with the z truck roller showed up again. About the first half of the carving was going great and then I started noticing the striations in the carving so stopped the carving and tightened the roller the best I could with the wrong tools. I started it again but toward the end you see the z roller loosening up again. I re-tightened and the last bit is again smooth. Not a big deal since this was a proof of concept and that portion worked out great.

I did notice what others have mentioned on the accuracy of the patterns though. There is about a 1/16 gap at the top between the emblem and the maple surround. The rest of the carving is tight. I created the patterns from the same figure so not sure why but doesn't really matter since I will probably put a backing on it. Still really cool experiment (and CW) and it shows I can now make this carving in a future time.

[bergerud]

Seems like pretty nice piece of wood for an experiment. I bet you could re-carve it like 1/32-1/16 lower and save it.

[oscarl48]

Thanks that is a great plan. I had thought it needed to be slightly deeper the next go round so this is perfect.

I had a few boards of black walnut and maple boards get caught in the last rain deluge we had here and it got fairly stained so didn't think twice of using it in an experiment but after carving it cleaned up pretty good. I would love to save it if I can so will give it a shot next weekend. I would love to have this on one of my walls once its all cleaned up. I was part of this command a few years ago.

[DickB]

I did notice what others have mentioned on the accuracy of the patterns though. There is about a 1/16 gap at the top between the emblem and the maple surround. The rest of the carving is tight. I created the patterns from the same figure so not sure why but doesn't really matter since I will probably put a backing on it. Still really cool experiment (and CW) and it shows I can now make this carving in a future time.

I suspect what you are seeing is due to the width of the bit. With no bit optimization (the default), the center of the bit will run up to the edge of the pattern.

[oscarl48]

Thanks for looking at my project and for the advice. That's what odd. I actually have the bit optimization to best on the pattern. I then flipped the cut out to account for the bit width. The cutout is really tight except for the top. Again not a big deal since I plan to use a backer board (1/4 inch plywood). I am very pleased with the outcome other than the z roller issue which seems to be taken care of (I hope). We'll see this weekend on how successful I was to tighten the nut.

[oscarl48]

Dan,

Great save. Thank you. It had not occurred to me to redo the carving on the same blank. Not the sharpest tool in the bucket at times. I set the carving 1/32 deeper and simply used tape (a lot of tape) to hold it in the original blank and it came out great. Still have to bevel the outside edges and router an edge on the inside but really pleased on outcome.

Oscar