Entering a new world!

Well lots of things have happened over the last 6 months. We moved back to San Diego from the Bay Area and I already miss our house and my shop even more! We are cramped into a two bedroom apartment with two storage units. That is nuts!
With that said, not having a creative outlet I looked for some shared shop space but to no avail. I did however find a place called the Maker place. (www.makerplace.com) This was a blessing. The shop is huge and has every possible tool you can imagine, but being a professional cabinetmaker I must say that the wood shop tools are somewhat beat with a lot of dull blades. But you still have an entire shop you can use for personal or business projects. They also have a full spray booth, metal shop, industrial sowing area, plasma cutters, laser cutters, 3D printers and the list goes on. What caught my eye was the wood CNC machine! I took two classes and now I design and experiment with the CNC router in mind. This is opening a whole new world for me! I always thought this was way to complicated but the truth is with today's software advances it's actually pretty easy. And it's one of the safest tools in the shop as well. Who knows where this will go but today I had the morning off so I started on a prototype coffee table top. Here are the the pictures:

First draft on the computer. The plan is to use solid wood or ply and fill the letters with
black epoxy, sand it flush and seal it with satin conversion varnish. For the prototype
I used 3/4" MDF with beech veneer.

Cutting the outer shape. This is the first time I used this machine and it
took me less than 20 minutes to set it up! It's not that hard.

Finished shape with tabs removed



Final top with v-carve letter cutout. The total cutting time was 50 minutes. Add changing
the cutters and setup brings it to about an hour and a half.

Time to spray black primer into the letters before sealer and finish.
 The original plan called for black epoxy sanded flush but that would have
cost to much for this project prototype. The plan now is to silkscreen the letters
or images onto the top instead of v-carving it. I have a class on that in April.
I really do like the v-carved letters but they're a dust trap for a tabletop. I might
make a few wall decorations with the v-carved letters. We'll see. 

 

The black primer has been sanded off and the whole thing got two coats of sealer.

Last but not least it needs a few finish coats and the  legs. Final pictures soon...