Whistle Punk Hollow Theming Job by Dan Sawatzky

Whistle Punk Hollow Adventure Golf in Squamish, BC is the newest recipient of an Imagination Corporation 3-D makeover. Precision Board Plus PBLT-30 was heavily incorporated into many aspects of the designs, including a massive train complete with Precision Board railroad tracks that turned out beautiful!

As a side note, here are a few of Dan’s favorite things:

Many more details about this project are available on Dan Sawatzky’s blog.

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Whistle Punk Hollow Adventure Golf project done!

Yesterday, we put the finishing touches to Whistle Punk Hollow Adventure Golf. It was a good sized project that kept us busy for a little better than five months. Many of the components were designed in EnRoute, and machined from 30lb Precision Board on our MultiCam. This allowed us to produce a better product, and much faster than if we had done it all by hand.

Here’s a virtual tour of the finished project.

Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of our crew, the project turned out fabulous, on time and on budget.
Now it is on to the next! Stay tuned…
-dan

Published with permission from precisionboard.blogspot.com. Source.

Rail plates

The rails for the train require plates and spikes to make them look authentic. These will be glued into place but once finished with the rust paint will look pretty convincing.

 The vectors were pretty easy and all created inside EnRoute.

I created a flat relief with a bevelled edge using the bevel tool by limiting the height.

Then the spike was added using the dome tool. Once again I limited the height to give it a little flat top.

I needed enough pieces to fill a 4’x8′ sheet of 1″ thick 30 lb Precision Board and EnRoute makes this easy with the duplication tool. I set the spacing to suit the tool size I was using.

There wasn’t much detail so I got away with using a 3/8″ ball nose bit and an 80% overlap. Some minor tool marks are visible but it’s no big deal in this application. Once the tool paths were done I sent it off to the MultiCam.
The two halves of the rails will be glued up and painted. The rail plates will be added on top of each wooden rail tie.
I’ll post some pics of the finished product when we are done. Stay tuned…
dan

Published with permission from precisionboard.blogspot.com. Source.

Riding the rails

One of the last items we need to design and create for the WhistlePunk Hollow project are the train rails that will be up on the trestle. The train actually sits on some sturdy angle iron and the rails will be just for show. It made perfect sense to machine them from Precision Board rather than source and purchase the real thing. For the end closest to the public I decided to use 40 lb HDU and for the rest we’ll stick to our usual 30 lb board. The rails are to be machined in halves from 1.5″ thick Precision Board. We’ll then glue the two halves together and finish with the Modern Masters rust paint that will make the rails impossible to tell from the real thing.

I started with the half rail profile and two straight lines three inches apart.

The rails would be created with the SWEEP TWO RAILS function in EnRoute. I like to create these kinds of files as a mesh file , tweak it as necessary and then merge it with a relief to get a routing file. Mesh files can’t be routed until they are merged with a relief. The command prompts take us thropugh the process of creating a relief. First it asks me to select the first rail…

Then the second rail…

And then the profile is selected twice – once for each end.

I then created a vector box around the mesh and created a zero height relief. 

I then selected both the mesh and the zero height relief which allowed me to open the combine mesh and relief function. I made sure it was set to MERGE HIGHEST function.

I then used the slice function to create a rail profile relief without the flat background.

I routed twenty two rails for our project – eleven from each sheet of 1.5″ thick Precision Board. We’ll glue these up and then trim them up to get them ready for the rust paint which is on order.

Next up are the rail plates complete with spikes to ‘fasten’ the rails to the wooden ties. Stay tuned…
-dan

Published with permission from precisionboard.blogspot.com. Source.

Onsite work

I absolutely love designing in EnRoute on the computer and then routing our pieces on the MultiCam but the truth is that this most often gets us about 50% of where we are going. It’s a good thing I also love to do the hand work and finishing.

The WhistlePunk Hollow Adventure Golf project is now in it’s final stages after more than six months of production. All of the features except the small signs we built with the help of the software and machine are now installed. We just got back from three days onsite, working long hours to tidy the job up. A few things simply had to be built in place because of their size and complexity. As we worked out in the weather the last three days I was reminded of how much more efficient it is to work in the comfort of our shop/studio where everything is where all the tools and materials are handy and the conditions perfect.

In the last three days we welded/lathed mudded and carved three bridges and a giant rock waterfall feature which is part of the logging train feature we built in our shop.

The sign over the gate which was completed some time ago also was installed.

While I was with the small crew in Squamish the ladies were busy in the shop putting the final glazes and paint on the small signs.

I’ll be heading back to Squamish for a few more days next week to tidy things up there. I’ll grab a bunch of shots of the finished project then. Stay tuned…
-dan

Published with permission from precisionboard.blogspot.com. Source.