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!!!

Bird Feeder Ornament, feeding those hungry birds in the winter! Wood is native Holly. Design inspired by work done by Frank Penta.

Bird is nesting inside and, of course, that IS a Christmas Tree inside the top of the Pagoda roof.

Look closely, you can see the bird nesting inside.

Next, the ‘usual’ collection of gifts…

Box to keep Finley’s Things. Sides are Ash, top is Wenge with Holly Inlay.

Front Corner showing grain matching.

Back corner showing grain matching.

Lift the lid and you’ll find Walnut lining with a surprise! Random tracks from an SD card will play every time the lid is opened. Currently the tracks are recorded animal and insect sounds.

The liner is removable including the false bottom.

With the false bottom removed, the custom electronics, including the SD card, is accessible. Note the wireless Charging circuit on the left side. This will keep the battery charged without wires when the box is placed on its stand.

For Kerry, I made a large, shallow bowl I’ve been wanting to make for some time. I had to wait until I had refined my Woodturning skills enough to have the confidence to take it on. I’m pleased with the result:

Large Bowl for Kerry

Showing back side of bowl after buffing.

Here’s the bowl right after turning the bottom first. Note texturing inside the foot.

Bowl right after turning the inside. Freshly oiled with Walnut Oil, it will need to cure for a few days before final buffing.

Bowl Rim detail.

Bowl Lamination Detail. The woods are Cherry, Purple Heart, and Walnut with dyed veneers between the layers.

Finally, here is how you deal with overly long handles on your turning tools. I couldn’t get enough sweep with the original handle to turn the inside of Kerry’s bowl. Solution? Cut it off! I’ve since replaced the wooden handle with an adjustable Aluminum handle. Much better!

and have to make some Yard Art!

Yard art for Kate & Paul’s place.

Some yard art I made for Clare and Finley’s house.

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!