So, what is everyone making for Christmas gifts? I’m looking for ideas to make for friends and family. I’ve had my Altmill for a couple of months now and have made a few projects (signs and trivets), but am looking for something meaningful and fun to make.
I don’t have a picture of the actual wall hanging but I found this render of something I’ve done for a couple of households. I found a free scrabble font somewhere so the score numbers should be correct. The fun part is finding out if you can even arrange the names of the household!
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Last year I had the bright idea to do lill simple 2 part click and fit christmas trees out of a few sheets of ply. The two proto’s I made turned out fun, but when I worked on the first batch of 30ish pieces or something, the fuzz and burrs that needed sanding was a bit over my head, and I scrapped the project cursing my cheap ass for not getting quality ply.
I have one proto away as a gift and the other ended up being jolly in our small road side shop. People liked it a lot.
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Love this idea. I’ll have to sit down to see who it might work for.
My wife would love this tree for her desk. This may have to be a project for the home this year.
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I can see if I still have the original jpg. I’ll go to the shop shortly, and if I still have it, post it amd like yer reply above.
Or maybe the vectric file, if you rather have that one, to get going fast.
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well seems like I threw the jpg directly from where I stole it into vestric without saving it.
Hope you use Vectric. Here’s the file:
buigboom.crv (1.2 MB)
It’s a trial design one including the bitmap. I think this is the most usefull one, to copypast elememnts from if needed. Please know that in the early stages I don’t care mucht for material settings, they are not needed at that stage. This is far from a workable design. The toolpaths are just for show, not for use. Notice the square in the base. That feature is where the tree is going to fit into, it still needs to be adjusted to the thikness of the material.
And here is a screenshot of the original picture.
Hope this gives enough of to work with.
Awesome thank you! I do ise Vectric so this is perfect.
@Sawdust_Manufacturer I’m currently making a frame for a round mirror and as I was doing the glue-up of the wood pieces, it dawned on me that it could make a stylized wreath. Not sure how I would finish it though. And given the time it takes, probably for the better friends 
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Ok, I looked at this for a fiew minutes and I could not figure out how the heck this started out to get that kind of a pattern. Please put me out of my misery and give more details.
@Jens It’s starts off as a simple crescent shape copied around a centre point. I then removed part of the inside and outside to get the required diameter.
I got that part but you must have glued up different chunks of wood … or are you saying that you carved the crescent shapes and glued them together? Maybe on top of a flat piece of stock?
Or is it just the lighting on the original photo that makes it look like there are different species of wood involved?
@Jens oh! That image is just a render. I haven’t carved it yet. I just finished gluing 30mm by 65mm strips of clear pine (picture below before the glueup)
My initial plan was to use maple or other hardwood but I wanted to make a prototype first. I was about to get some 2x3’s but then remembered I had the clear pine. If the pine version looks good, the prototype may be the final version.
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Ahhhh, that explains things.
Love this idea Michael! Curious though, Do you cut out each letter individually or do you cut them out as a single assembly to hang as is? I like the idea of individual letters but feel like the machine time would go way up, especially if putting bow ties or similar alignment mechanism on the backside.
@Greener It was made as a single piece. The lines are just carved on the surface to make it look like pieces. If I remember right, I think I ended up doing a small bevel with a 90° V-bit around each square piece to define the piece and soften the edge.
I made mine with MDF for a uniform look but your question has me curious about how one made with multiple pieces would look. Variations in the wood grain might look really nice. I made mine with MDF so it has a very uniform look. I think if I was to make one with multiple pieces I would figure out the design and then lay out the pieces in a grid with some of the pieces rotated by multiples of 90° so that the grain helped separate the pieces.
I’ll also share a little trick I sometimes use for smaller parts. If you use tabs to stop the parts from coming loose on the perimeter cut you kind of need to sand the sides to get rid of the tab. This sanding can lead to the parts not all being the same size or square depending on the sanding method, skill, luck etc. So instead of tabs I will sometimes just not use tabs but set the machine up to not cut all the way through. I’ll leave about 0.5mm and then sand the bottoms to remove that so the sides don’t get sanded before the glue up.
I also think that if your willing to do the glue up in multiple steps you won’t need a carved in alignment method as a piece of wood with nice corners and straight edges should suffice for keeping things straight and square.
I wasn’t thinking about changing woods but now that you’ve mentioned it I think that would be a pretty slick look. My thought process on the multiple pieces and alignment method was more so towards the assembly being changeable in the future ie additions or less ideal, subtractions. Also making it a game of building it for whomever receives it, they can design their game pattern. If you kept the tolerances tight and everything is friction fit you could avoid using glue. Was thinking 8 bow tie cutouts per letter, two per side. Carve out the bow ties on the backside of all your tiles, then flip and cut out your letters. Dowels on the side would also work, but that’s a whole lot of extra time that can’t easily be done utilizing the cnc. Now that I’ve gone way overboard complicating this and quintupling the time it will take to build, I’m gonna go find a corner and contemplate my life choices
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For whatever reason I have a thing for trays…
I made this one after a family member saw my gingerbread man tray last year. She asked if I could make a gingerbread girl.
This was the first project when I received my Alt Mill.
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My wife would love this gingerbread tray. Do you recall where you found the file or did you make it up all on your own?
Thanks. I created this one from a picture I took of a small purse I saw at a department store.
I need to find where I got the gingerbread man tray. I later edited that one for the gingerbread girl. I’ve gotten inspiration from searching online and other sources. I traced our cookie cutters for some projects.
