This week, our project was to CNC a 2D picture using Inventable’s Easel. I didn’t really have a strong idea of what I wanted to do at first, so I just scrolled through the icons on the Noun Project until I got bored and decided to just put some random animals on it. That’s why what I cut out is just a horse and a boar facing each other. 
This is what my cut was supposed to end up looking like. It was surprisingly easy to set up and use the CNC, though I’m not sure why I expected it to be any harder than the other computer-guided tools we used. I used one of the flat drill bits and cut to a depth of 1/4″ in two passes. When it finished, it needed a lot of post processing, as it was pretty messy. 
When I was sanding it down, I noticed that it had lost some of the detail, as I had known it would, but then the boar’s ear fell out because it was such a small piece of wood. I should’ve edited the file slightly to get rid of that unnecessary line in it, but I really didn’t feel like redoing it at that point, so I just left it. As a side note, though, while I originally thought a line drawing would be better than a filled in/silhouette-style design because it would probably be faster to cut, it turned out to be more of a hassle. Because of the finer details in my design, I had to be very careful sanding it, and there were a lot more edges that needed sanding. If the drill bit had been 1/16″ instead of 1/8″ it would’ve been better, but using a smaller step down probably would’ve also helped.
In any case, after I sanded it down some, I decided that I’d just stain it with two different stains. I used the dark gel stain for the animals and the less viscous ebony stain for the rest of the wood, not letting either stain sit on the wood for too long because I didn’t want it to be too dark. I also colored in their hair with a sharpie because I thought it’d look nice. I used stain to make up for the missing ear on the boar a little bit, but it didn’t help all that much because it looked pretty sloppy.
In general, I wish it had turned out a little nicer but I’m not unhappy with how it looks. If I had to do it again, though, I’d make sure that there aren’t any tiny pieces of wood that might get chipped off and I’d probably try to minimize the amount of sanding I’d have to do. This was a fun project though, as the CNC seems like a pretty neat tool and it was nice learning to use it.
