This will hang on the door of my wife’s mother’s apartment.
The “wood sandwich” is birch and walnut. I bought the individual models from the Vectric Design and Make site, then made up my own composition. I used a 1/4" down cut end mill for the roughing pass, a 1/8" ball nose for the finishing pass, and a 1/8" downcut end mill for the cut out. The finish is 6 coats of satin rattle can lacquer.
Overall size if about 9" almost square by 7/8" thick.
@gwilki - Nice job Grant. You do such beautiful work. Nice detail on the hummingbird. Am getting anxious as the weather is getting warmer so I can get back into my shop. So many things I want to make.
@Heyward43 Thanks much, Heyward. I am pleased with the level of detail in the models from Vectric. I debated whether to do this with a smaller bit, but settled on the 1/8" with a 7% step over as being a reasonable compromise between the level of detail and the time it took to carve it all out.
I am spoiled by having my shop in the basement so I can work all year round. I will think warm thoughts for you. 
Beatiful! Inspirational for me to get onto doing more! 
Nice job. How many hours did you spend altogether on this project?
@Megistus Tks, Wayne. I took about half an hour to arrange the components into the final design. It took just under 2 1/2 hours to do the milling. Putting the finish coats on it did not take much working time. Elapsed time was long as I waited over night between the first couple of coats of lacquer and the final coats.
Before that, I spend about an hour milling the rough sawn birch and walnut and gluing it into the final blank. Elapsed time was a couple of days as I let the glue set over night before I started milling it.
Looks great Grant. Anybody that doubts the quality you can get from inexpensive equipment and thoughtful design and prep need look no further. I really like how smooth the flat sections are.
@BillKorn Tks much, Bill. You make an excellent point. When these machines are tuned up properly, they can achieve repeatable, very detailed work. I think that the only change that I will make in the process for future pieces like this is that I will leave the two boards separate until the end. I will carve the forefront wood all the way through, then glue it to the back panel. That way, there will be no sanding around the detail to clean up the back panel. That said, this one needed very little sanding. Again, as you say, it’s a tribute to how solid the machine is.
i agree, it looks great. I was wondering, if you were to go with 2 separate boards how would the detail around the flower and bird look. From what I 'm seeing here, there is a detail dip around all the birch layer - would that be lost??
@Panamapete Tks much, Pierre. The “dip” is just a shadow in the picture. Doing it in two pieces would look the same. It would, however, save some nuisance sanding.
Very nice work! I know what you mean about strategies to minimize finish sanding. Well done.
