The new house interior will require many specialized and custom moldings. Today I created the first test piece. One of Janis’ favorite themes is butterflies so we decided to incorporate them into the trim in the living and dining room areas. The trim will resemble the outside trim with the hearts.

As usual it started with a sketch – an idea. I sourced some butterfly shapes and I then created a silhouette of the shape. Because of the small scale of the final routed butterflies we decided the antenna and tail had to be eliminated. I then hand traced the shape to vectorize it abd tweaked it a little to make it the butterfly we wanted.

The vector of the butterfly and the test panel shape was imported into EnRoute.

I sized the butterflies and then duplicated them before tilting two of them left and right twenty degrees.

Then I randomly placed them through the panel.

I first created a flat relief of the background panel. It was half ( 0.5″ ) the thickness of the panel.  Then, starting at the top I selected non-touching butterflies down through the panel. These would be the top butterflies. These were made into flat reliefs 0.8″ tall. I left them selected when I went to the merge highest function to make them easier to locate.

Merging was done as always by first selecting the base relief (square box)  Make sure MERGE HIGHEST is selected.

Then I selected each butterfly relief in turn.

After the first group was finished it was time to move onto the second level of butterflies. These would be 0.7″ tall reliefs. I started at the top once more and worked my way down selecting non-touching butterflies. These were made into reliefs like the first set and then merged to the base relief.

Lastly was the lowest level of butterflies which were made into reliefs that were 0.6″ tall. These too were merged to the base relief to finish off the routed panels.

The panel was routed from 30 Lb Precision Board using a 3/8 ball nose bit to rough and then a 1/8″ ball nose bit for the finish pass.

Yesterday I routed the address marker for the new house. It turned out really nice. The piece will blend perfectly into the other house trim and yet stand out when someone wants to know our house number – not that they won’t know it is our house. The truth is there aren’t many houses like it around here or anywhere I know of.

Sometimes the files that appear real simple have a lot of steps. Our address sign for the new house was such a piece. It was to be routed from 1.5″ 30 lb Precision Board. The address marker would feature the same heart background as the trim.

It started with the vectors – all created in EnRoute Pro. The lettering was a little light for routing so I used the outline tool to add 0.1″.  I then deleted the original letters.

I then added a border around the letters. The heart vectors were hand placed in a random pattern.

The outer shape was created as a flat relief 0.7″ tall.

I then imported a sandblasted woodgrain bitmap and applied it to the base relief at 0.2″

The inner vector was also made into a flat relief 0’4″ tall.

The hearts would be raised from the background in three layers. I selected the hearts for the first layer one at a time by picking hearts that did not overlap. They were made into flat reliefs reliefs. By leaving them selected when I did the merge they would be easy to locate and delete when we were done with them.

To do the merge I first selected the outline as the base relief.

Then the heart reliefs were selected one at a time and merged to the base relief. I then deleted them before moving on the the next layer.

These steps were repeated two more times for two more heart layers.

 When the heart layer was complete it looked like this.

I then merged the heart layer to the base layer using the replace command.

The lettering border was next. The reliefs were created as flat reliefs. I merged (highest) these reliefs to the base relief.

The numbers were added to the relief using the bevel tool. The base (straight up portion of the letters) was set at 0.2″ high.

The file was now ready for tool pathing and then sent off to the MultiCam. It will be roughed with a 3/8″ ball nose bit and then routed using a 1/8″ ball nose bit with an 80% overlap.

The house project is still going full blast. The outside finishes are almost done, with the windows now being installed. Now it is time to begin putting up the trim – as soon as it is all painted and glazed. To make sure it all lasts for a long time we will apply three base coats of paint to the routed trim and then the three glazes. Today I detailed all the edges and blew off the dust in readiness of the paint. All the vertical pieces are routed. Tomorrow I’ll fire up the MultiCam once more to begin routing the horizontal pieces we need.

Our university students are with us a few more days before they head back to their studies. Next week I’ll be back in my shop once more and things will get back to normal after a busy summer on the house.

We’ve been busy starting to install the routed trim and then painting it up in it’s final colors. The large round window was the first to be completed. The routed Precision Board trim received three coats of base color and then four layers of ever darker glazes.