My best woodworking project yet

[BuckeyeDennis]

Thanks everyone, your kind words are greatly appreciated!

I had originally planned to make this flight tray on my conventional Shopsmith equipment, using the bandsaw with a pattern guide, the sanding drum in pattern-sanding mode, the overarm pin router to mill the tumbler pockets, and the undertable router to do the edge roundovers. I had even made the pattern-sawing and pattern-sanding fixtures. Then the flight-tray project got put on the back burner, and I bought a CNC router in the meantime. With Christmas coming up, I decided to use this tray as an opportunity to learn sculpting toolpaths and two-sided machining on the CNC. Once programmed, I could pretty easily make more trays for Christmas presents, using the less-figured parts of the Walnut boards. In the end, only the top edge roundovers were done on my Shopsmith router table.

I promised Al some pictures of the rough board, so here goes. I couldn't find any shots of the uncut board, but here's a top view showing the crotch figure in the rough blank.

Flame rough top.JPG (100.53 KiB) Viewed 4857 times

Did I mention that the board was really, seriously bowed?

Flame rough side.JPG (81.75 KiB) Viewed 4857 times

I guess all that warping explains why you don't see many crotch boards! But in this case, the banana shape inspired the final shape of the flight tray. The board simply wasn't thick enough to flatten both sides of it, so I used a curved shape for the bottom.

To fixture it for flattening and top-side machining, I used painter's tape and hot glue, per the Phil Thein planer-sled technique. It works great on unflattened surfaces.

Flame rough quarter.JPG (106.18 KiB) Viewed 4857 times

And finally, here's a shot of the blank being flattened by the CNC router. As deep as the cut is at the end of the board, you can see that there's still more to go in the center.

Flame surfacing.JPG (173.72 KiB) Viewed 4857 times

Ed, I do have a couple more beauty shots of the finished tray, and will post those later.

[DLB]

Beautiful work and awesome finish! A few questions:

1) Did you use a Spoilboard router bit to plane it?
2) What type of clamps are those on your WoodAnchors?
3) Was there any evidence of the hot glue compressing while working the board? I presume not, but I would have expected that... especially with a typical surface planer. (The attachment asserts it is hard to compress, but I'm skeptical.)
4) If you had gone the OAR route, would you have used a sled and spoilboard bit to plane the top surface?

- David

[BuckeyeDennis]

Beautiful work and awesome finish! A few questions:

1) Did you use a Spoilboard router bit to plane it?
2) What type of clamps are those on your WoodAnchors?
3) Was there any evidence of the hot glue compressing while working the board? I presume not, but I would have expected that... especially with a typical surface planer. (The attachment asserts it is hard to compress, but I'm skeptical.)
4) If you had gone the OAR route, would you have used a sled and spoilboard bit to plane the top surface?

- David

Thanks David! To answer your questions:

1) I used a Whiteside 1370 bowl bit to flatten the top of the workpiece. I was curious to see if the radiused edge would leave a better finish than a spoilboard surfacing bit, plus I figured that the smaller diameter wouldn't require as much power from the little Makita trim router on my CNC. You can see the edge radius on the workpiece in that last pic.
2) The clamps are prototypes of a new ToolQuest product that's intended primarily for CNC applications. We plan to launch them later this year.
3) I've had zero problems with the hot-glue blobs compressing, even when running them through my Shopsmith Pro Planer (with it's heavy roller-preload springs). The CNC, of course, applies negligible downforce to the workpiece.
4) Well, that would have been the smart thing to do. I, of course, would have probably have tried to run the sled sandwich through my Pro Planer, thereby tearing out that nice figured walnut ...

[BuckeyeDennis]

If you've ever wondered why it's called crotch flame walnut, this next pic should answer that question once and for all. Tilt your head to the right when you look at it.

Flame wet varnish.JPG (110.35 KiB) Viewed 4779 times

That photo was taken pretty early in the finishing process, with a wet coat of varnish. The lighting is simply the overhead fluorescent tubes in my workshop. The colors in the photo have not been manipulated at all -- that's how it really looked.

It took a wet or seriously high-gloss finish to pop the figure that much. I was using gloss poly to build the finish, but the look when dried was too plasticky for my taste. So I compromised and used semi-gloss spray poly for the top coat. It pretty much eliminated the plasticky look, but also reduced the contrast in the figured grain, especially in soft lighting.


Here's a shot of the finished tray, sans whisky glasses.

Flame top.JPG (106.65 KiB) Viewed 4779 times

And here's the bottom of the tray.

Flame bottom.JPG (124.4 KiB) Viewed 4779 times

The flat "framed" recess on the tray bottom is intended for personalized inscriptions. But with this piece of wood, I just couldn't bring myself to carve into that beautiful figure. And when he received the gift, my brother heartily concurred.

So to illustrate the engraving possibilities, here's a casual snapshot of a different tray from the same walnut board. This one was for my son-in-law, an accomplished pianist.

Zac.JPG (109.52 KiB) Viewed 4779 times

I didn't need to do anything special to darken the engraving. It's carved with a V-bit, which exposes end grain as it cuts. Then the walnut end grain just naturally darkens when you apply the varnish. If you look closely, you can see that lines carved parallel to the grain aren't very dark.

And that's pretty much it! I won't go into all the nitty-gritty CNC stuff on this forum, but would be very happy to answer any questions about the process.

[algale]

Makes me say "wow" again! What beautiful figure!

[JPG]

Noticed thee retained the curl on the bottom. Lucky thee did not have wind!

[BuckeyeDennis]

Noticed thee retained the curl on the bottom. Lucky thee did not have wind!

Are you thinking it would fan the flames, or blow them out?

[Hobbyman2]

very nice !! the finish is awesome !

[JPG]

Noticed thee retained the curl on the bottom. Lucky thee did not have wind!

Are you thinking it would fan the flames, or blow them out?

Wind as to wind a clock! But I am sure thee already knew that!

[BuckeyeDennis]

Noticed thee retained the curl on the bottom. Lucky thee did not have wind!

Are you thinking it would fan the flames, or blow them out?

Wind as to wind a clock! But I am sure thee already knew that!

Duh, as in a winding stick! I always think of wind as "twist", so I assumed you were just punning me.

I couldn't find any single photo to prove it, but that rough workpiece did have some wind/twist, as well as considerable cupping. But a CNC router executing a surfacing toolpath is basically an automated router sled, and will machine the top workpiece surface planar regardless of it's initial shape. Using the hot-glue-and-tape method, you have a few seconds to adjust the workpiece "pitch and roll" however you want it, until the glue blobs cool down and solidify.

As for the crotch figure, it has quite a bit of depth to it, so there's still some nice figure on the bottom of the tray.