Fireplace Mantle

[wooddr]

I thought I would show a few pictures of a Fireplace mantle I am working on for my house. It is just the bottom half for now. I will finish the upper half after the holidays. The columns were done with the indexer using the Shopbot indexer software (that works great). The column tops were done using Artcam 2008 and about four or five hours of hand carving and clean up. I figured out that because the quarter sawn oak was so hard that it actually caused my indexer coupler to slip every once in a while throwing the design off.

Dirk




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[handh]

Dirk,

Really like the columns. Look forward to see the final piece.

Jeff

[myxpykalix]

I would love to see some pictures closer up and some more details. How long did it take to make your corbels? Was it a "one at a time" process or did you do several on one piece?
What is the deminsions on them? How long did it take to carve them each on the indexer? VERY NICE!!

[wooddr]

Jack,

I laminated up rings and stacked them. They are about 8” at the top by about 6” tall. They took about four hours each to machine one at a time. I then had to use a Foredom carver (like a bigger Dremel tool) to clean them up. That took an additional three to four hours per cap to get some of the finer detail.

I am ordering the new Partworks software so I can try out the four sided carving and see if I get better results with less hand work.
I need to drill and tap my coupler with a flat spot on the shaft to keep it from slipping. By the time it got all around the full 360 degrees, it was probably off by 4 to 6 degrees. I was able to clean them up good enough, but they are not perfect. That being said I never in a million years could have made these without the indexer even with the cleanup time.

Jack,

I sent you a separate e-mail with a better picture.

Dirk

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