This is a gift for my eldest daughter who just gave birth to 2 adorable twins. My goal was to celebrate their love for family as well as my humble admiration for their courage.
I used an acacia board, more precisely a stair step. I sliced it to use the end grain and take advantage of the natural color variations of the wood rings. I glued everything together to create a 10"x11" board.
The drawing is designed as a word cloud that repeats the family’s first names in different size. I used Carbide Create V7 for the design and the board was machined on my Shapeoko 4.
The letters are filled with epoxy which I colored a pale yellow and sanded with and orbital sander. I then applied a coat of clear epoxy which I sanded to finish with a coat of mirror epoxy. The brand of epoxy used is ECOPOXY.
This was my 5th or 6th attempt, I used 4 boards and lots of epoxy. I made many mistakes when preparing the board and also when calibrating the CNC.
Lessons learned: think twice, think again, validate twice and validate again. If there is varnish on the board, remove it before pasting :D. Don’t trust the CNC, always keep an eye on it. Make sure your software is up to date and in sync with the Carbide Motion version. Finally, do a test (or several) on scrap wood. Taking time is the key to success, we will go faster next time.
Great outcome and I really like the end grain look.
Anthony
Superbe rendu.
So true. And then validate once more just to be safe 
Well done! You still got a great piece and learned a lot along the way. Where did you get those clamps? Looks like a handy set I could utilize.
Thanks ! I got them on Amazon Canada… Here is the link Amazon.ca
You have some work to do to make them functional but work like a charm once done
Can you tell me more about the ‘yellow’ tint color used to mix with the epoxy? the contrast in colors looks great!
Yes… I mixed 1 part of yellow with 3 or 4 parts of white into the ecopoxy… I do not remember the exact quantity of white.
Here is the reference from ecopoxy
Came out beautiful! I’m curious about why the glue up after lettering?