I was surprised to find that, as I started, I couldn’t even view the website because the hosting company had updated some software without updating all the requisites so the site didn’t even work!  Sigh…

In any case, if you’ve been one of the ones who have been checking in, I apologize for letting this languish and will try to do better in the future!!!

The map covers most of Penobscot Bay, from Owl’s Head to the mouth of the Penobscot river at Sandy Point, with Camden on the West side, Castine on the East.  You can easily make out Belfast, Camden, and Rockport Harbors, Lincolnville Beach,  Vinalhaven & North Haven, Islesboro, and Castine as well as the coastline around Searport.

Corner view of box with carved terrain map.

Opposite corner of box with terrain map.

View showing interior of box with Mahogany lining.

Top view of terrain carving of Penobscot Bay on Corian.

The good/bad part of this style is that most of the woodwork is curved, with very few straight lines.  I concluded that, to keep the proper flow and sweeps AND still have all the interlocking joinery line up, the framework, at least, needed to be cut on a CNC Router.  Cool, I’ve got one of those

To make a VERY LONG story shorter, I did some trial cuts of some of the longest parts in January of 2019.  From these experiments, I realized that the CNC router needed to be larger to reliably make the parts.  Consequently the project languished until I finally upgraded my CNC Router to a larger, more solid, one this year.  This spring I made the base, then made the top, and left the pieces to cure over the Summer while we were in Maine.  When we returned, and got some time, once Kate & Paul’s Wedding reception was completed, I did the final finishing, assembly, and installed it in our Living Room.  I’m quite pleased with the result:

Completed Coffee Table installed in Living Room.

Coffee Table right view, ready in shop.

Coffee Table, Left view, ready in shop.

Coffee Table base, all assembled, ready for finishing.

Reading up on various machinist’s fora, there were two recommendations for early add-ons to any mill purchase.  The first is to add a Digital Readout, which is needed to get around the normal backlash in the table positioning controls.  I knew this right away and added that upgrade as part of the initial installation.  The second recommendation is to add a power feed on the X axis (the long axis).  So this addition was expected and I ordered the parts and raw material right away.

It was necessary to use the Mill and the Lathe to make the custom parts so was, on the whole, a great first project for the ‘Machine Shop’.

Here is the design that I first captured in Sketchup, a 3D CAD program I’ve used for years.

Exploded Sketchup model of the power feed assembly.

Here are the pieces before assembly:

My first ‘machined’ part! The drive pin from the power feed to the table X axis lead screw.

Power Feed Parts ready for assembly. All but the gear motor, bearing, and coupling were machined in the ‘machine shop’.

Finally, here is the final power feed.  It works well, although I have to admit that I had to upgrade the motor to a slightly more powerful gear motor.

Completed Power Feed attached to the Mill Table. Electronics box below the power feed.

I made a variety of exposures and left them around our yard for our granddaughter to discover!

Laser Etched Slate

Here is the replica, mounted on our Garden Shed:

New decoration for our garden shed.

And a closer view:

Here’s a closer view of the branch and ButterFly

And finally the Butterfly:

Closeup of Butterfly

Details of how this was made are down below.

The other recent addition to the Yard is some livestock to entertain our Granddaughter when she comes to visit.

Here is the Sheep looking longingly at the front lawn…

Closeup of the Sheep:

Sheep painted.

The two large pieces, the Sheep and, especially, the Stylized Branch, both required some special cutting techniques because both of them were too large to fit on the CNC Plasma Table.  The table can only cut  23″ in one direction and 25″ in the other.  The good news is that the table is open on the ends of the 23″ axis so, theoretically ^{(see Note [1] below)}, I could cut something as long as will fit in my Workshop.

However, this required multiple steps in both processing the artwork and the cutting process. Each step allowed me to cut a region of the metal, the cutting was paused while I re-positioned and aligned the steel for the next cut, and then cutting was resumed at the next section with the software offsetting the coordinates to match the new position.  The alignment is critical as the cut line is only about 0.050″ wide so any error in positioning would, at best, leave a jog in the cut line, or, worse, an uncut section of steel that would need manual cutting and fixing.

The sheep was used to test and prove the process.  It could have been done by limiting the size to 23″, but using a full sheet gave me a bigger sheep and tested the process.

The first step was to rework the art work:

Maximized Sheep Artwork, rotated and scaled to fit 24×24 piece of steel.

You can see the split line between the two halves of the drawing.  That’s where the art work needed to be separated into to independent groups.  Note that the art work has internal cuts and they had to be separated into the two different cut phases as well.

Using the Sheep project to refine the process turned out to be a wise decision as I learned enough from the Sheep project to do the Stylized branch, which required three sections over a 72 piece of steel, and 4 joints.

Branch Artwork showing three sections and mounting hole locations.

Cutting a 6 foot long piece of steel also required some re-arrangement of my workshop, not only to make room for the workpiece but also to provide support for the portions of steel that were on either side of the table during the cut.   It also concerned me that my Plasma cutter, which is normally kept in a little alcove surrounded by fiberglass welding blankets where most of the sparks are contained by the blankets, would now be out in the open during all the cuts with sparks flying in all directions!  As a precaution I put my fire extinguisher right at my side during the whole operation!

Here is the setup prior to cut:

I had to rearrange my workshop to manage a 6 foot long piece of steel!

And here is the result after the cut:

And here is the finished cut. Notice the lead in and lead out cuts at the joint of each section.

And the final piece cleaned up and ready to paint.

Branch ready for painting!

All in all, the cutting went very well with probably no more than 1/32″ misalignment in the worst case.  As a result of this project, I’m confident that I can reliably do larger pieces still!

My friend suggested that a silhouette of Druid Arch, a difficult to find, but very imposing natural arch, would be appropriate. Fortunately I had a fairly nice and high contrast photo of the arch that I took on a trip in 2005. So…
Here’s the arch:

Druid Arch

and here is the gift:

Gift to retiring Canyonlands Park Superintendent, Kate Cannon.

So, a popular item in plasma cutting ‘circles’ is what’s called an ‘F-Bomb’. Now without going into the derivation of this name, the object is a cutout that looks like a ‘bomb’ that would be dropped from an airplane with a large ‘F’ cut out of the center (for some reason I’m not at liberty to say). For this occasion, however, we can be sure that the ‘F’ stands for ‘Fifty’ and therefore, the following object seems entirely appropriate:

‘F-Bomb’ birthday gift for Duff.

Happy Birthday, Duff!

For those who are curious, the ‘bomb’ was cut out of a sheet of 11gauge 304 Stainless Steel and I used my Laser engraver to ‘burn’ the printing onto the surface.

Here are some of my samples:

A collection of Spheres I turned as a result of the Sphere turning class. Left to right, the first is Mahogany, then Cherry, then, in the back is Spalted Tamarind, and finally, in the foreground is a lamination made of Paduak, yellow Mora, with a green veneer separating the woods.

The Spalted Tamarind was a gift to my wife, and the Paduak, with its single band, was a gift for my granddaughter’s first birthday.

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