So this project started out as a gift for my mother in law in memory of my father in-law who past away nearly 1 year ago after suffering from dementia for many years . Shortly after his passing a cardinal started visiting us in our back yard which made us think of a popular saying “When cardinals appear, angels are near” and thus the cardinal became very symbolic to our family. Therefore when my wife asked me to make a gift for her mother all we knew was that we wanted something with a Cardinal. I looked at a few models available on the Internet and did not find what I was looking for therefore I decided to dive right in and learn how to use Blender as I figured this tool would be handy to have in the toolbox of software to work on 3D projects. All I will say is that many hours where spent trying to improve on the model and many YouTube videos were watched but alas I finally got something I was happy with.
From here I imported the model into Fusion 360 as .obj meshes which was about when I learned of the latest theme for the community challenge which contributed to the idea of spanning the cardinal on the branch across the word “RemembrancE”.
As the theme is about Letter cut-outs I’ll go a little more into detail about this part of the project. Basically once I got the text into a sketch in Fusion 360 I offset the face (curve) of the sketch to create the outline. I then extruded the text itself and split the body with a mesh which I created using an image of leaves by converting it’s grayscale version to provide the texture pattern. I then extruded the text outline leaving the textured portion recessed into the project.
Once this part came off the Shapeoko I found there was not enough contrast and the texture/pattern was not easy to see on it’s own. I then experimented with a technique by coloring the texture with a black pencil and use the toothbrush to spread it around.
And then I used some sand paper to remove the high spots of the texture to expose the woods natural color.
Finally there was the cardinal… As this was my first 3D carving I was a little concerned about messing this part up so I thought things through and took my time (a lot of time) to get this done. Anyhow many toolpaths involved the Cardinal was carved out from 4 faces (top, bottom, left and right)
I made sure to mark up the stock with the face and the origin where to zero and labeled the matching .nc files with descriptors like (top, bottom…), tool number to use, and zero locations like SWT (South, West, Top) as messing up the stock setup or using the wrong file would have ruined many hours of work. You’ll notice I also decided to put my tabs where the wings are on the cardinal. In blender I modeled the wings separate from the bird and used a boolean operation to match the contact point between the body and the wing.
Here are the parts off the Shapeoko ready for assembling and finishing.
And now a closeup of the cardinal from the top.
The funniest thing about this project was the fact I was working on the 3D model on a 34" computer screen so everything looked big/dense. Then once I started milling it on the CNC is when I realized the actual scale and how fragile these parts were which led to high stress milling moments. That said I survived and now have significantly more experience under my belt with my CNC machine, software to create models and toolpath strategies.
I will admit I do have a bit more work to do on the finishing touches like applying more coats of stain, paint and a clear finish. I also plan on making some sort of bracket to lift it off the table and provide a bit more stability as I’d hate for it to tip over and break off that tail. This will also allow me to incorporate the quote “When cardinal appear, Angels are near” in smaller lettering under the word remembrance. Some may have also noticed that the cardinal currently has no legs, this is because they ended up being too flimsy/skinny and didn’t feel confident with it supporting the cardinal long term. Instead I’m thinking of maybe using some hanger wire to make legs which I can drill into the bird to insert them and secure them into the letter ‘b’.
Anyhow that is my entry for this community challenge amongst many other great entries and looking forward to seeing these challenges again in the future when they start up again.