Wild Horses

The reason I decided to create a version of our local school mascot is because there is a pizza place here in Wyoming called "The Rebel Inn".  By adding a flying disc of pizza dough to the rebel, you have their logo.  The owner of the place is also the owner of a trucking firm. Keith is a proud member of the Wyoming community and wants very much to see small business succeed.  He graciously let me borrow one of his box trucks to travel all the way to the U.P. of Michigan to get the ShopBot and only asked that I fill up the tanks.  I will be doing a few other things for Keith as I get comfortable with the new tool. I thought giving him the first full project off of the machine was a good start.  It's way too flat for my tastes, but each day moves me closer to DIMENSION!

Today I decided to try something I've been thinking about for awhile.  The composite decking that is now available is pretty cool. It's designed to last much longer than wood and not require stain.  I did some small tests with my CarveWright and found it could easily be carved.  So today it was time to scale up.  I loaded 6 boards, each 5.5" wide on the table.  I decided to stay with the local school mascots, and opened the logo for the "Mustangs" from nearby Kickapoo.  I carved the logo at only 1/16" deep, but I feel it's still to deep. I would not want anyone to trip over the engraving. I will do another sample at 1/32 which I believe will be just right.  I think it would be very cool to have an 8' diameter logo in a large deck.  At 1/32" I believe the water, dirt, debris that might linger in the carving will be minimal and easy to sweep/blow out.  At 31" wide it's still relatively small.  For a larger logo, a larger bit would work quite well.  Thanks to Bill DeBekker and Jim Lohmann for some tips on feeds and speeds.  Bill forgot more last week about cnc machining than I'll learn in the next year.

Each day is another step...and a great deal of fun.