Cool and I love the wood choice.
Nahhhh that Juice Groove is right where it’s supposed 2 B. The phrase is it’s Optically Delusional! Kill Bro.
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Round over is generally done with a form bit, Is concave down to a point. It just then is tool pathed to follow the outline of the board. Cuts smooth and quick
Tom
For folks curious about using roundover tooling, note that it is not supported by Carbide Create, so one has to take the cut on faith to a certain degree — a technique for getting an approximate preview is shown at:
Making some gun grips for my 1911 this weekend, I’m making 4 sets of different variants. Getting ready to make some CNC cuts and have everything prepared.
The darker wood (Ziricote) was salvaged from a veneer inlay cribbage board I ended up not finishing, which the wood is expensive and was perfect for the grips.
After cutting my pieces for the grips, I took some time to inspect the inlays. The inlay was cut almost 2.5 years ago and has been sitting on my shelve in the garage. It was nice to see how reliable the inlay were with the plywood substrate, veneer, and the epoxy inlay. The seems and the joining were spot on.
This just shows to never under estimate the power of the Shapeoko 4 Pro, I’d say that’s pretty damn good. That veneer is .02 thick.
For those that haven’t seen the build thread, here is completed cribbage board using the same technique.
Any whoses…it’s nice to inspect and see how it reacted over time.
Time to cut some gun grips!
Quick update:
Did a test cut to test the tolerances of the screws and countersink, need a little more shelf and tighter tolerances and g2g for the full run
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Holy Cow! That is some incredibly gorgeous work and gorgeous wood!!! I love seeing this extreme level of detail. Some day…SOME DAY!! So many ideas floating around my head just waiting for the chance to get carved.
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Just a fun little cut to hopefully/maybe/possibly help with those pesky pest/window/siding/roofing/religion/politics/whatever people that keep interrupting our evenings.
7-5/16" x 10-1/4" x 3/4" (nominal) cedar cut with oracal 813 on then cleared and sprayed black. bulk left natural to hopefully age to a nice silver/gray
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TROGDORE!
20 characters
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Still have some sanding and finish, but pleased on the outcome so far.
I ended up making 3 versions:
The classic: Big leaf maple
Honeycomb texture: Ziricote
Contrasting Honeycomb: Ziricote and Quilted Maple
This was Vcarved inlayed along the curved profile and it really did turn out great. The goal was crisp corners along the profile where the honeycomb outline matches the base. Really happy with the result.
Now to some sanding…
Cheers,
E
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Yeah, those pesky wood grain fibers … 
Looking good, but I’m waiting to see how well those tiny ridges hold up to the inevitable and typical gun handling. Perhaps you’re going to do an epoxy fill? 
Or maybe some cactus juice? Is that common in this sort of application 
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Tex,
No epoxy fill, I could do that pattern in epoxy, but for this, I don’t think it will ever be holstered. The pistol was a deployment pistol to remember a tour.
Now is this a functional pistol grip, yes and probably not hold up over time.
Those crisp edges get knocked down during sanding for extra stability, but the inevitable will most likely happen.
I might later down the road try to treat the wood with penetrating epoxy, I just don’t if it will give the stability.
This is right after a water pop, makes it easier to remove those grain tails
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I like this idea very much, although speaking personally, I would not want to use a grip that had such a well-defined pattern as the hexagons. May I ask what finishing cutter you used? I ask because I have obtained a reasonable finish using a two-fluted, carbide, ball-ended cutter with a diameter of 0.25mm (0.009") to shape and finish the wood. The ship’s helm illustrated below is carved in olive wood. This was the first side of a two-sided carve, which was carved without any finishing by way of sanding.
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Here is a Fast Track board that I made with my S4 on Baltic Birch 0.5 inch thick. It’s made by V-cutting the painted area borders to about .01" depth to make scribe lines. These scribe lines are deep enough to be visible to show where to mask for painting. Then stain the surface to give some contrast to the colored areas. Once stained, I then sprayed a clear coat to seal the surface. I learned in a first attempt that if the surface is not sealed before painting, the paint will wick into wood grain following the direction of the grain. This left very poorly defined painted edges. So, the sealed surface prevented this problem. After masking for painting all the colored areas individually, I then put the board back on my machine. I created a jig to hold the board in place on my machine with indexing pegs such that I could take it off for painting and put it back on in the exact same place to be held down and run my program toolpaths to v-cut the scribe lines of the painted area borders a little bit deeper (.02" depth). Cutting the painted border edges a little deeper cleaned up the edges for nice straight painted borders. Once all the painting and scribing was done, I then ran the toolpath to drill all the holes for the pegs. Once all the holes were drilled, I then painted a final clear coat over the whole surface to finish it out.
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For folks who want to make their own, this was walked through as a tutorial at:
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I took the liberty of creating my own board design rather than tracing someone else’s design. Tracing an existing design is one way to create such a board. I chose a different approach by creating my own geometries and processes to create mine. If anyone would like my CC file to create or modify my design just let me know and I will post it.
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I like your 1911 case. Looks like an old 1911 with that lanyard at the bottom of the grip. My Uncle brought back his 1911 from WWII. My cousin his son had some people living in his house and they stole it. I was hoping to get that 1911 when my cousin passed but it was gone to the ether. Your bible verse is a nice touch for the top of the case. Nice work.
That is pretty! I think I might give it a try. Not going to be a purrty!