A friend of mine who is a stone mason had an interesting project come up. He requires some very ornate pieces to be carved in some Indiana limestone so he reached out to me to see if I could help him out. I did a test outside and the limestone cuts like butter with a regular endmill. I plan on milling the pieces in a milling bath to eliminate the dust generated. I was wondering if anyone has tried something similar and if they could share their wisdom.
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Never tried it myself, but here’s a thread where it was discussed a bit:
The bath milling sounds a like a good plan for respiratory safety. Do show us what you come up with !
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I have not cut limestone, but I have cut marble. It works great with the right bit.
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Depending on the spoilboard you have I would remove the MDF and add a pump to put coolant onto the tool. Put a large container under the router to catch and recycle the coolant. If the endmill cuts it okay great, otherwise I would look at using a diamond bit to grind the surface.
I carved some one inch thick limestone squares a little while ago and just used a 60 degree v bit,the first one I put a black plastic sheet down on the spoil board and sprayed a water mist at the carving and came out very good.Then I did the last two with no water mist but had the vacuum on and again came out very well.The v bit is still in good shape!!!I would not do it without good vacuum facilities MDF is bad enough but this limestone generates some very fine dust.
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