Power Carving Wood

Discussion
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Hey @metaltechs & @woodtechs,

I’m making a wooden stool and need to dish out the seat. I’d like to use the angle grinders from the welding booth with flap disks but wanted to check if I’m alright using this in the woodshop? I’m not sure if there is an extraction attachment for this so would appreciate any advice about how best to do this!

Cheers,
Pete

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Sorry , that cannot be done in the workshop, dust extraction must be used on all power tools.

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Router or Cnc or drill press to get the shape.

Unfortunately we do not have any of the traditional tools to get this done , like Scorp, adze, or travisher.

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You can potentially achieve that with the big cnc. We did a similar thing with Matt for his bench.

Are you able to make designs in Fusion360?

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I’ve had Fusion downloaded for a while but haven’t used it yet, this could be a motivator to get started! Thanks both for letting me know.

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Want to echo what Mark said, would need to have extraction to use in the wood shop.

I don’t think there would be any problem with doing it outside though (assuming metal techs are ok with borrowing an angle grinder for this).

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I’ve made a stool, chair and a bench using some of the other options that have been highlighted.

Options:

  1. Power tools: Christian helped me to CNC my bench seat. I then used a combo of my hand tools and a random orbit with a soft pad to refine. CNC then random orbit would be easiest. Obviously you have to work out the modelling side, but this is the quickest and would be doable at the makerspace with minimal extra stuff
  2. Traditional hand tools. When I did my chair I used a scorp, then travisher then curved card scraper. I have all of these and would be open to letting you have a go with them. It works, but there is a bit of a learning curve with each of the tools and it’s hard work and slow! How much are you hoping to remove? What wood are you planning to use? Would you rather learn 3d modelling or to use niche chairmaking tools? If something mega hard and a deep saddle I’d be more inclined towards the CNC given there is one at the makerspace
    2b) A combo: use a scorp to remove a bunch of wood then use a random orbit with a soft pad (can then use with extraction) to refine. With some coarse sandpaper this actually works pretty well and is a hell of a lot quicker than card scraping it to smoothness. Soft pads aren’t very expensive and are pretty useful for a variety of things. The scorping is my least favourite bit, but this hybrid approach is legit. I imagine an adze might make for easier roughing than the scorp but I don’t have one
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I think @joeatkin2 might have an opinion here.

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@kyle we have a dumpster grade angle grinder (old blue draper), should we donate it for the cause? :joy:

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:slight_smile: I think Metal is happy for our dumpster grade grinder to go to the cause. Is this activity covered by an existing wood risk assessment?

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This is all really useful information, I’m going to think how I’d like to do this and get back! Thanks for letting me know some of the different options available :grin:

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Impression I got from Joe last time this was discussed was ‘not now, not ever’

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Following… I’m all in for power carving.

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Just wanted to follow this up as couldn’t gauge whether this was a definite no, or allowable with an extension of a risk assesment for outdoors use?

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Just did a test for dishing out a seat using the big CNC. There are free stl files online that can use. Machine time is approx 1:20 for roughing and same for a finishing pass using the 8mm endmill. Results are good. It will still need some hand sanding, but the power carving gets taken care of.

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Oh great! Still need to get an induction on the desktop CNC and the big one but good to know for future projects. If you have a pic of the seat would love to see how yours went!

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Back in on Thursday. I’ll post pics of the test we did then - just did the roughing toolpath (clearing bulk of material, but leaving rough ridges which get smoothed out in the finishing toolpath). We decided that taking the bit of extra time to do the finishing toolpath would be better than sanding down, especially if it’s a hardwood. The test block is back in community woodpile if you are in before then.

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This has had a bit of sanding/smoothing by hand, but not finishing pass on the CNC. It’s just a test using some scrap from the community bin. The 3d file is easy to adjust - can scale it in any direction, make it deeper or shallower etc.

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Looks great, definitely inspired to give it a shot when inducted!