How to VCarve a Sign - episode 224

Have you ever been given a strangely shaped piece of wood and been asked to machine it?
This is exactly the sort of job I designed my vacuum table to handle. A piece of material shaped such that my standard hold downs will not clamp it and since I really need to flatten the wood I can't have the clamps on top anyway as they would get damaged. 
Well that is the senario I encountered this week. I need to flatten my wood and position the lettering on it such that it is centered and look correct. Given the shape of the wood this is not obvious at first glance and simply putting my letters in the center would not work. I needed another way of aligning everything.
This is the method I choose.

The Results
It came out as expected with the lettering in the center of the material as planned. Using a photo to get alignment is a good way of getting alignment but you need to keep your wits about you. Set up a reference vector like my oval and scale your photo to this vector. Make sure the vector position does not move with respect to the origin point and select an origin that you can easily locate on the material. It could be sonething as an X that you mark on the material before you take the photo. So long as you have a reference point that you can set your cutter to. After that position your engraving to suit the photo and not the reference vector. the rest is plian sailing.

Software
For this project either VCarve Pro or Aspire from Vectric could have been used. I used Aspire for this one.

The HOTBOX

so what is the HotBox?
I'm not sure what it is called in other countries but here it is called a Bach or a Crib or at a pinch a holiday home though it lacks the creature comforts you would normally expect while on holiday. The name comes from the basic box shape and the fact that it used a coal range for cooking and heating. Given the fach that it is small and the coal range put out massive amounts of heat you are left with a hot box. As I was growing up I spent most of my holidays here in the middle of nowhere, Surf Casting, rounding up sheep and anything else that was needed.

My work here is done so until next time have a good day.

Cheers
Peter