View Single Post
Old 09-14-2007, 09:57 AM   #2 (permalink)
braisler
Addict
 
braisler's Avatar
 
Location: Midway, KY
My dad makes lots of 'power-carved' signs and plaques. Maybe give that a try as a compromise. The way that he does it, is with a school overhead projector to project the image (if the item is large enough to warrant that) or just trace it directly onto the wood otherwise. Then he uses a standard router to route away the bulk of the wood with a selection of channeling bits. Finish up power carving the piece with a dremel and some smaller bits. He likes to come back and finish the inside of the carved area with acrylic paints to give some color to the design.

I don't know if this helps, or is the kind of thing that you are wanting to do. A limitation of the CompuCarve system is that I think the max board width it will accept is 12 inches. My dad routinely does 3 and 4 foot wide panels. Certainly the CompuCarve is going to be quicker, but it takes a lot of the creative aspect out of it and costs an arm and a leg.

My 2 cents...
__________________
---
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
- Albert Einstein
---
braisler is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76