Here’s my latest flag projects. I’m a beginner so don’t expect perfection. All were done similarly to my “We The People” flag earlier this month. The wood is a project panel, pine, I think, from Lowes. I can get three 20"x 10.5" flags from each 6’ panel cost is a little over $6 per flag and not have to worry about surfacing, glue-ups, etc. I did use sanding sealer and sanded with 240, then followed with two coats of shellac. before masking the union for blue stain and red for the rest of the flag. The .008 clearance toolpaths create the “white” stripes so I don’t have to mask the red/white stripes.
The Minuteman flag was done on my MK2 using the same Carveco model as the We the People flag. The middle with minuteman was created by creating a circle vector and subtracting it from the stripe vectors. The minuteman with the 2nd amendment text was created in Lightburn and burned into the flag using my 20W laser engraver. The resulting burn wasn’t dark enough for my taste so I put two coats of 3X poly over the entire flag. Once cured, I used a very small brush and painted the letters and minuteman with black acrylic paint; using a damp cloth to remove any overage.
The weird star in the upper left is a knot in the wood that made it look darker than the rest, nothing in the toolpath or Longmill caused it.
The other two flags were made the same way. I CNC’d the entire flag then created the diagonal blank spaces with a .008 deep clearance toolpath. Then over to the laser to engrave the Gadsden snake and POW-MIA.
These aren’t fancy, just me learning how the Longmill and Carveco work together.
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