New Projects

[Jon Sollee]

Anyone care to share any new projects they are working on? Would love to see what everyone is working on. Images would be awesome.

Just finished this sign for the Santa Monica Merchant.SMM 1.jpgsmm.jpg

100P 30 S 600DPI wood planks. They wanted the natural organic look for their shop sign. Took 1 hour to lase.

[Bruce Page]

Jon, I'm not a laser guy but that is an awesome looking machine!

[Jon Sollee]

Thanks Bruce!

[Bert Kemp]

I ride with the Patriot Guard Riders of Arizona. For those of you who don't know who we are,Our main mission is to attend the funeral services of fallen American heroes as invited guests of the family. Each mission we undertake has two basic objectives:
1. Show our sincere respect for our fallen heroes, their families, and their communities. We usually form a circle of American Flags around the service area.
2. Shield the mourning family and their friends from interruptions created by any protestor or group of protestors.
We accomplish the latter through strictly legal and non-violent means.
Even tho we do manyJudy (1).JPG missions each year for Heroes we don't know, every once in a while one of our own pass's. When this happens I make a memorial mirror for the Family and its presented to the family at their loved ones service.
In the last 3 months we have lost 2 of our own and below is the mirrors that I made for the families.
Joe was a member of the Army's 5th Infantry Div. Their Insignia was the Red Diamond.Attachment 285770
Joseph.jpg

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

Nice work Jon. I'm not working on anything interesting right now. Just name tags & such with people's names that wouldn't be appropriate to post on a forum. Now if you're talking about new projects that include Spring chores such as pruning trees, cleaning the winter ick off the RV, worming the livestock. You know. Fun stuff like that. Well .... I'll spare you the exciting pictures, since that usually involves a lot of stinky mud.

[Gary Hair]

I ride with the Patriot Guard Riders of Arizona.

Good on ya Bert!

[Jon Sollee]

Very cool Bert! Thanks for sharing!

[Jon Sollee]

Mike that sounds like you have your Spring all mapped out. What are you making the name tags out of?

[Bill Stearns]

Hey All -
Just finished 'little project for the assisted living place where my folks live 'n Florida. (both my Dad 'n Mom are 95 years old.) Their pastor is retiring - so, I made this plaque for 'em. Engraved a picture of the place on LaserBlak, then embedded it into the wood, 'stead of just taping it on. Trouble is: my Dad - the positive guy that he is - will no doubt think its spectacular. I could use your more unbiased opinions. (fun sharing ideas ... uh?)

Bill

[David Somers]

Bill, That came out great!! The photo looks like it engraved beautifully. Nice idea embedding the LaserBlak instead of surface mounting it. It is a little hard to tell from the photo but my guess is it really gives it a very finished look. I think your Dad will be justifiably delighted with it, as will the pastor and his wife!!

Dave

[Bill Stearns]

Hey 'gain -
Jon started this out by asking 'bout our projects; things we might share. It is neat seeing what others are doing. I do pretty well with "lake maps" - but, could use some advice. (I'm up against those selling 3-D engraved maps 'n sometimes "routed" lake maps.) Using Corel Draw X5, if I were to take the time to segment the different areas of the map illustration into layers, and engrave each layer, or map segment, with different tones, different colors - would I achieve a 3-D look? Haven't tried yet. Anybody have an idea how it would work out? Or, any other ideas on how I might improve on engraving the maps I do. (Epilog 35 W.) Eager to hear.

Bill

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

Mike that sounds like you have your Spring all mapped out. What are you making the name tags out of?

Barely scratching the surface yet with Spring chores. :-) I usually make name tags out of LaserMax or Textures depending upon what the person needs. Veterinarians I work with prefer scratch resistant. I use magnetic strips instead of safety pins. Less jabs into the thumb that way!

[David Somers]

Bill,

That is a lovely map!

A couple of thoughts come to mind for variations. One would be to do something similar to the actual layered 3D maps that are out there and instead do inlay for the layers. The map would be flat, one layer, but each band of depth would be an inlayed wood of a different color. If you used a fairly white wood for all the layers and used aniline dyes you could create a series of graduated blue shades for the various water depths. If you got really fancy you could do blue shades for the lake depths, and shades of greens or browns for the land depending on the land cover that is there. Again, color gradations for contours. It would be somewhat labor intensive, but possibly not as bad as it sounds. Since it is inlay, the entire map could be cut on one piece of whitish veneer. Cut a bunch of them in one session while you are set up. Then have your dyes ready and do all the pieces that will be color a, then color b, color c, etc. Then glue and assemble and clamp till dry. I don't think I have seen someone take this approach yet.

Another approach I have been fascinated with visually are city maps I have seen that are kind of the skeleton of a leaf. The veins remain but the material between the veins is gone. You are left with a very open tracery. The same thing is done with a street map, but what is left are the streets. A big city becomes an open tracery of streets with all the spaces in between gone. Quite striking. A little tough to navigate with when you are out for a Sunday drive of course, but you can't have everything. (they don't fold well) To be honest, I would need to ponder a bit to see how that would be effective with a contour map like you are doing versus a street map. Might not work so well, but worth a thought.

A last thought would be a bit odd, but perhaps worth a try.

You have seen what they call light twirlers, spiral cut snowflake type designs done in a modestly thick mylar? Or Christmas ornaments that are thin wood but cut in a spiral so they expand out when you push on the center? Do that same thing with your contour lines in the lake. You would need to modify a copy of the file so that the shoreline contour is not simply one continuous closed line, but instead spirals over to include the 20 foot contour, which spirals over to become the 30 foot contour, etc. Use some clear acrylic rods as stand offs and use them to support the shoreline contour above the plaque used as a background and have the contours down below the shoreline spiral open down to the plaque surface. That plaque surface becomes the lake bottom. Obviously you would make the "lake" and its contours out of a thin enough wood stock that it can flex enough that the spiral can expand down from the shore to the plaque level.

Fun work though. I bet that engraved map does well for you? Very nice.

Dave

[Chris DeGerolamo]

We recently moved to the mountains of NC from Raleigh and I had the time to make a new sign. This is constructed of stained and/or sanded 3ply baltic birch.
IMG_20140328_085703_182.jpg

[Jon Sollee]

Thanks for everyone that has shared! Love to see what everyone is doing. Lots of great work here. Keep the projects coming!