We’ve created more than 200 routing files for the trim on the house and routed thousands of pieces over the last two years. In the last three weeks we’ve been working hard to finish the outside and this includes creating even more routing files and then routing a bunch more pieces. Thankfully there aren’t many areas left to do.
The trim around the front and patio doors was routed yesterday and assembled today. This afternoon I created the routing files for the decorative bands around the patio posts. I thought them worth posting as they involve three different procedures that are a teeny bit tricky.
The decorative bands are 8 inches wide and are comprised of four pieces that will be motored to fit. As usual I started with some vector files created in EnRoute.
I then created a fat relief using the large rectangle.
Next I created a thinner flat relief of the three crews that would be embossed on the final piece.
I then added domed hearts to the centre panel.
I then added some woodgrain to the rectangular shape using one of the bitmaps from my TEXTURE MAGIC COLLECTION. This shot shows how I stretched out the bitmap to allow the rectangle to fit into the section of woodgrain I liked.
I used a value of 0.15 inches for the woodgrain.
I then merged using the REPLACE function. First I selected the relief I wanted to modify.
Then =, following the prompts I selected the areas I wanted to merge.
As quick as that the panel was ready to tool path. But I needed eight panels so I duplicated them and arranged them to fit onto the piece of 30 lb Precision Board I would route them from. Then I used a 3/8″ ball nose bit for the rough pass with a 50% overlap. The final pass was done using a 1/8″ ball noise bit and an 80% overlap.
