That is great Tony,how long to carve the image?
I cut this today using the 502 engraving bit,it took nearly 4 hours to carve it but have 14 more to do,have to somehow try to speed up the carving.
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@Graham the rough cut took about 3 hours with a 102 bit and the finish was about 10hrs with a 1/32 tapered ball nose. I was conservative in the cuts because it had 1 been a while since I used the machine (3XXL belt driven) and 2 I wanted to use the stock oak I had so wanted to ensure a smooth successful carve.
I need to get on mine soon!! Time. TIME! Need another 3 hours per day just to do some fun stuff, eh?
Never enough time for the fun stuff.
Even if you decide to use something fancier for drawer inserts you might want to test things out with that insulation board. It’s $10/square and even cheaper if you buy a whole sheet.
It will allow you to tweak your layout and size before you cut the inserts with HDU😊
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Tony,that is a long carve but well worth it,how long do your tapered ball nose bits last?
I have used this tapered ball nose for about 50 or so carves maybe more and still producing great results. Sorry I dont have a better answer but that is my experience so far and I have also hit my metal clamps a couple of times but no damage. I bought this in 2022 as I just looked at my Amazon history.
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Not a great carve, pine was still a bit wet.
Image resolution was not enough for the carve size…
Learned some more.
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@jtclose Hey Jim if you are using Image to Relief try bumping up the texture smoothing a little bit and it should help with the lack of resolution in the original image
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I lost definition in the face when I tried more smoothing. Never found good settings without introducing other artifacts.
Still learning
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I think it looks like the version from Planet of the Apes. Just well worn.
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Bull vs Bear two-color inlay!
This is by far my best inlay to date. My wife is a CFP, so it’s not meant to be a cutting board, but more art for her office.
Things I learned.
- A 6-ton press, with a 3/4 steel plate, really helps get that plug seated.
- Only carve the color you are going to plug next. I carved both the bull and the bear at the same time. That was a mistake. Next time, I’ll carve the female for only the color I am doing next.
- Plenty of Glue = Plenty of Sanding. lol
- Sanding still sucks, especially on end grain.
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Pretty simple linen cabinet build. White oak, white oak ply, and hardwax oil finish.
I do prefer the clean modern look, but I’m thinking I need to start adding more flourish on my builds as a challenge.
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Simple is better. Your above cabinet door is already busy but looks good. At some point in a design you are just showing off. Nothing wrong with that but something like your cabinet will age. What looks good today may look different in 10 years.
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Nice. What’s the material?
I am getting ready to do A 4x5 oval with a similar color scheme and trying to decide if I use PVC.
I had planned on color-core, but it was insanely expensive. So I went with 1/4" PVC & painted one side black.
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Nicely done. I love the way it turned out!!
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I will note that if one is going to set a possessive, one should use a curly apostrophe:
so ’
(set the text above to make it clear it wasn’t a comma, c.f., the British term for them, “inverted commas”)
rather than the unidirectional stick quote (which the Discourse forum software automatically replaces in normal text):
'
relegating it to only the computer code usage where it is appropriate.
Customer’s design. I went with it. I was however, delighted at the Frank Zappa reference, and was singing/humming tracks from the album the whole time 
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