I carved a set of playing cards for this weeks homework because I think they look aesthetic and they fit in the color schemes of the few colors the oedk has in stock (black, white and red). I pulled the image from the noun project, processed the file to remove the text using vectr and imported the svg into easel. I set the depth of everything except the small squares in the corners of each card to a 1/4in and the squares themselves to a depth of 1/8in to emphasize them from the the rest of the card shape. Since the material I was using was poplar, which is not one of the materials that available on easel, I compared the density and hardness of poplar to other woods that were available in the program. My research led me to select the material as soft maple. Even though the values werent exactly correct, the hardness and density ratings for soft maple were slightly higher than those for poplar so I knew it was unlikely I would break a bit using the settings for soft maple. From there I used a 1/8in upcut bit to carve out the shape. Although easel didnt warn me that I had any features that were too thin to cut with the 1/8in bit, it made a dogs dinner of the small squares in the corners of the cards, cutting them into amorphous blobs.

My initial reaction was that I had to restart the carve, which meant using another piece of stock and sitting through another cut (one that would have taken much longer with a 1/16in bit). Before scrapping my current piece, I decided to try something. I replaced the bit with 1/16in upcut bit and modified the file on easel so only the small squares were left in the exact same spot as they were before. Leaving the material where it was in the clamp, I reran the cut with only the small squares. Fortunately, this worked and I got nice, cleanly defined squares. For cutting my second piece, I reversed the easel file, cutting out everything except the small squares with a 1/8in bit (saving time) and then after replacing the bit again I cut out just the small squares.

For post processing, I started by cutting off the excess bit of material to make my pieces symmetrical. Next, using fairly high grit sandpaper, I sanded the edges of all the cuts to remove lose strands as well as the outside of the wood blocks to give them nice rounded edges. Afterwards I taped up the edges around the heart and used a hand brush to paint the inside of it red. Next I taped over the entire piece with masking tape and cut out the outlines of the cards and the small squares with a utility knife. Surface prepped, I spray painted the pieces black. After removing the masking tape, I noticed some of the paint had bled around the edges. At the suggestion of Josh Kaye, I sanded the surface of the my pieces with high grain sand paper to sharpen up the paint job.

If I were to do the project again, I would redo the paint job. I had originally planned on spray painting the card interior white with a black outline, but upon trying to keep only the inner elements exposed, I found that tape was ineffective and flapped down into the cut interior, which I wanted to make black. Although the tape wouldn’t protect the cut interior it would protect the outsides of the piece, which was my intention. I realized later that if a did an initial coat in white, then covered the white section and sprayed a second coat in black as I had before, the black would easily cover over the white paint in the areas I didnt want it and produce the paint job I had envisioned.