Carving Experiments

When my husband was doing construction full time, he knew he didn't want to be fixing up houses forever.   We had talked about investing in a small CNC machine (computer operated cutting machine) to start to make cabinet doors and other wood objects.   We took a portion of our tax return and bought a machine.   Unfortunately at the time, it was on back order and wasn't expected to be in for a few months.   They had predicted we would receive it in May.   During the months that we waited, my husband got a full time job.   The machine finally arrived mid-May and we were so busy trying to finish up left over construction projects and starting a new job that we didn't have any time to dig in and play with it.  

Then my son and I finally decided to pull it out and try to use it.   We faithfully watched the instructional video and started to set everything up as needed.   Then, we realized we were missing the cutting bits... an essential piece of making the machine run.   My husband contacted customer support and had some replacements on the way.   Once we got the new bits, a few more weeks went by.

At last, about two weeks ago, we got it running.   We've essentially did a bunch of trial runs just to see how it worked.   Then last week we created something worthwhile to give as a gift to my cousin at her wedding.  Tonight we had our first SALE!   We made a plaque as an anniversary gift for our most faithful customer.... my mom. 

So... all that to say, here are some pics of our creations.....

(up)  Playing around with doing pictures.   Realized we need to use wood with a very light grain.  

(up) This is the untrimmed and un-edged version.

(up)  Ditto for this one.   Didn't actually get a picture of the finished product.

(up)  Our first sale!