With the arrival of the big green CNC (more on that later), I have not actually made too much since the last post. I did go over to the house where some of my recent work has been installed and was able to take a (not very well lit) photo of one of the large cherubs in its place on the wall. You can see that in the first photo below. I have also been involved in quite a big design project for the same client. This is for a Chimney Piece (like a fireplace but more grand). The design is based on a drawing from a furniture design book dating from 1742. You can see this in the second photo below. I have taken the design and modified it to incorporate a number of cherub carvings and also some other decorative details. He has given us the go ahead to make two of these, one for each end of the room. So I have a lot of work to get on with modelling and machining all the new carvings and figuring out how we’re going to build all the other parts to mount them onto. Should be fun… You can see my final design in the third image below.
As regular readers will know, I share a workshop space with Thomas Philpott Cabinet Makers and much of my work is for their projects. Given some of the things we’ve got coming up this year Tom decided to stop trying to get me to figure out how to make parts on my small machine that are much bigger than it and instead to get a really big CNC to do that work. So he ordered a 3m x 1.5m (10’ x 5’) CNC Router. After a couple of weeks of rearranging the workshop, building new stairs and floors we were ready for it to arrive. It was quite exciting as we we’re responsible for getting all 1.6 Tons of it off the delivery truck and into the back of the workshop. As you can see in the pictures below it took a fair bit of effort but the BGB (Big Green Beast) eventually got into place. It was commissioned last Monday and we’ve been having fun cutting some test parts on it and getting to grips with its control software. Next I’ll have to teach the lads to use VCarve Pro and they’ll be able to make all the big (boring) stuff themselves. Leaving the fun carving to me and Igor (my small CNC).
