Xmas Project that included VCarve

[JoeM]

It's hobby stuff - a gift for someone next Christmas - but that's what you get to do when you're retired...

The tree-top angel started as a paper pattern that I bought for scrollsaw intarsia, but I couldn't cut clean lines without stacking and wasting too much wood so I scanned the top half into VC and projected each piece onto one or more domes to get as much of the 3d shaping done by machine as I could. There are more pieces on the back that are also shaped. The halo was driving me crazy by hand but turned out to be a very easy 2-sided cut on the machine with a dowel right in the middle for registering the two sides, and the profile cut with a pointed round-over. Overall size is approx. 11" tall, 5.5" wide and 4" deep.

Then I built a storage box - padauk with a purpleheart top and built-in hinge, 12x6x5ish. I used VCarve to inlay the angel pattern in holly from the advent calendar Vectric posted last December. I used the regular inlay method, not the v-bit method. My smallest endmill (.025") was just barely small enough for the pattern. Because holly is expensive and I am cheap, I ended up using as many scraps as I could for the male pieces, which in some spots meant clamping down a sliver of wood smaller than a dime just to cut out one little piece.

crv files are unavailable of course because the 3d angel came from a commercial pattern, and vectric owns the inlay angel.

[highpockets]

Beautiful work, very creative use of VCarve to do the angel.

[mtylerfl]

Looks great, Joe! That's a very nice project. Christmas in July! (That's the only way most of us will get our Christmas stuff done in time - start those projects now!)