Tree of Life in 3D

This project was inspired by the Community Contest #4 entry by @Rafi Community challenge #4, 2019-2020 edition
though there are others in this community that are also beautiful.

This was cut from an 18" round pine board available from the orange big box store for about $7.
The design was modified in Vectric Aspire v9 from an STL file provided by @Rafi, thanks for your awesome work on the file Raphael!


I’m working on a second version that will have two wood species for what I’m hoping will be a nice contrast.

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I love the added trim detail around the edge! Should make it “pop” off the wall nicely once finished.

Thanks! However, in this case I’m not that original and owe the praise to @Rafi for his design.

I have the glue-ups complete for the second phase and will be cutting through the tree reveling the other wood species which will also frame the ToL and should make a really nice wall hanging.

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Have had a couple of requests for the origin file, so I’ll post it. Keep in mind that the credit should go to @Rafi though.
Tree_Of_life.zip (3.9 MB)

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Came out very nice :slight_smile: I turned a black/white tree-of-life design into a 3D-ish one by just playing around in GIMP:

My wife and I sell them on Etsy. This one was a “dud” because of the knot in the branches. I tried staining it anyway but it was still not good enough to send out so I had to just cut another one :stuck_out_tongue:

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Kind of a shame that the knot wasn’t located so as to seem to be a hanging bit of fruit or a root ball or something.

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I love it! That’s part of the beauty of wood, the variation I mean. What cutter(s) did you use? The way the edges blend onto the flat part of the board is outstanding!

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Working on the newest iteration, and it’s looking good. This is a redwood piece with eucalyptus glued into a cutout and machined from there. This was a bit of a theoretical exercise and I’ll use all dark wood on the insert on the next go-around:

And here’s the finished product. Somehow seems appropriate given our current social distancing situation…
IMG_3407
I ended up using a light walnut stain, only on the tree, to even out the color variation in the tree then sprayed with clear poly. Currently gluing up panels of all dark wood to try and avoid having to stain the next iteration.

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