Howdy all, I finished my gun grips finally, they were sitting on my shelve ready for finishing the last 3 weeks. It’s been a busy 3 weeks getting my garage in order.
This will be the last project I will cut on my S4Pro and when I was making the grips, I thought about all the hours I ran on it. It was the best decision I’ve ever made! The Shapeoko was the first major woodworking tool I purchased, with limited to no woodworking background, and it motivated me to start something I always dreamed of. Every tool I bought had a purpose to feed that machine, enabling whatever I was making at the time and now, almost 4 1/2 years later, my garage is packed full of tools and my wife doesn’t know what the heck she did when she pushed me towards it 
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These grips were designed in Fusion, which pushed my modeling and toolpathing further than I expected, it has a curved profile running up the grip, maintaining the angles of the original grip. I also made 2 different versions of the grip I modeled that used a honeycomb texture, one that’s solid and another using a 3D Vcarve method. The 3D Vcarve turned out better than expected and gave me some confidence that’s this is a repeatable method for any application.
Anyways here’s the finished pictures of the 1911 grips:
Version 1: Bigleaf Maple
Version 2: Ziricote
Version 3: Ziricote and Quilted Maple
That 3D Vcarve with the 3D profile really turned out good, I’m very pleased with how it turned out.
I can’t tell you how appreciated I am being part of this community and how great Carbide3D is. Over the last 3 months I came to the conclusion that I wanted something bigger with more capability, like an ATC capable machine, able to do larger than I ever thought type of projects to take my woodworking to a new level.
So 2 weeks ago I received my AVID 5x10 with a ready ATC spindle for their upcoming release. I assembled the machine last week, calibrated it, and decided to finally build my mother’s dinning room table, which was way over due.
The tables overall diameter is 53” and was a good first project, but risky with an entirely new motion software.
I give it to her over the 4th, she has no idea the quality of the grain on this claro walnut Burl, the pictures don’t do the justice when you look into it.
For the Shapeoko 4 Pro, all is not lost. My local high school actually has a shop class, and I’m donating it to the school. I’ll get to come in as a quest and instruct some classes throughout the school year and I’m super stoked about that, both operating and CAD/CAM.
Alrighty, I’m doing some video editing of the grip build and hoping to post the YouTube video this weekend. I hope I can still post some projects in the future if the admins allow it, I’m forever grateful of this community.
Cheers everyone 
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