Using a CNC in the wood shop

[Neale]

Nothing quite so fancy, but this was an interesting project. A neighbour wanted a sign for his new house which was going to have the same name as the one he had lived in as a boy. His father, a wood-turner, had left various lumps of timber including a very well-seasoned piece of yew. He also had an old brass nameplate off the old house which had a cast impression of the wren from the old farthing coin. Could I make a sign out of these, incorporating the wren as a 3D carving?

I did a similar thing to you - skimmed one surface of the yew to freshen up the grain and give a flat surface for carving. The lettering was easy, but I had to modify the Mach3 probing routine to take off the point cloud of the wren using a touch probe, then scale and tweak it to fit. I actually skimmed the surface leaving a raised area for the carving so that the wren is partially recessed, partially proud. I used Vectric Vcarve for all the gcode generation. Came out OK.