Beginner Tree Spirit In Live Edge Walnut

Software:

Vectric V-carve Pro, bCNC

Machine Time:

14 hours

Bit or Laser Size:

1/4" down cut spiral bit, 1.5mm tapered ball nose.

Feeds & Speeds:

80 IPM roughing pass, 1.25 D.O.C, As fast as it would go, finish pass

Materials:

Walnut, MinWax One coat polyurethane.

Sometimes in life, you will encounter random, chain of events type things that just happen. Well....one of those happened for this project. The wife wanted to go look at some yard sale someone was having locally, so I'm like cool, see you when you get back. She comes back five minutes later saying she can't find it. So I drop what I'm doing and tell her I will take her. We get there, and they have the typical old ladies clothing and everything else that I would expect to see. So we leave and drive down the road a bit and see a sign with an arrow for another yard sale farther down the road.

We get there and start looking around. Cool! there are tools and things I might actually be interested in. Then I see these two pieces of live edge slabs of wood sitting off to the side. I couldn't really tell what species it was because it had been sitting for quite some time. After some quick haggling, I scored both pieces for a whopping $7.00. I figured they were worth that no matter what species it was.

So I get them home and had no idea what I wanted do with them, and then an idea hit me for one of them. "Tree Spirit" I remembered one model I downloaded as a package deal. After searching my computer, I found what I was looking for. So I set one of the pieces up one my cutting bed, and it is all cupped and warped. I started adding shims and hold downs to it until I got a reasonably level cutting surface, and then went to work designing the layout of the model, and how I wanted it.

Using V-Carve, I setup my work space and added a clipart dome/dish they have for free, to the material. I made it an oval dish shape and then imported the model I wanted, and calculated my toolpaths. I hit the go button on the machine, and brown chips started flying, along with the unmistakable smell of Walnut. BTW, the other slab is Cherry, lol.

This slab is about 36" x 16" x 1.125" The carved portion is 12" x 24" The other slab is a bit bigger, and I haven't yet decided on what I want to do with it.

Hope you all enjoy this one!