The beam project was far from finished. While we had a great cake, it desperately needed to be iced and decorated before it was done. We like to do as much work as we can while our projects are still on the ground and handy. Once something like the beam is lifted into position things get a LOT harder and take a lot longer!

Once the welding was done it was time to box things out with some treated plywood. We would staple our expanded lath to the plywood and then trowel on and carve the fiberglass reinforced concrete before painting. This work would be done up on the scaffold. Before the mesh went on we had to decide just how the trim and details would work into the picture. These pieces would be designed in EnRoute and then routed from 30 lb Precision Board on our MultiCam. The cement will go around these pieces.

A quick scribble was the first step – just to make sure Janis & I were in agreement on the rough concept. No problem there. The owl was an idea I threw in for the end of the beams. It was decided things were busy enough without adding another element to the mix.

Once the idea was solidified it was time to begin sketching on the actual piece to determine sizes and locations for the fancy routed trim. These too were quick and dirty, reflecting lots of thinking and discussion, weighing every creative possibility.

I took a few measurements and notes from our drawings on the piece and then went to my computer to work things out and work up a routing file. The vectors were simple. The beam blocks were square, tipped to diamond shape with a heart in the middle/ A flat relief with a square depression in the middle was the basic relief. It would be routed from 1″ thick 30 lb Precision Board.

The heart was added to the diamond relief using the dome tool and the constant height command. This makes it a little flatter than the usual tool.

I wanted the outside border to have a raised woodgrain and the sandblasted wood from the TEXTURE MAGIC collection was just the ticket. I imported the bitmap and the resized it until the diamond fit into the section I liked best for this project. You can see just how big I made the bitmap file in relation to the panel we were creating.

 I added another vector rectangle around the ones we were using to build our file. This meant we could add texture to the outside border rather than just the middle square. The new outside rectangle reverses the selection to make it a container rather than a hole.

As quick as that this simple file was done.

I duplicated the files six times to create al we needed at once. Three of them were flipped to add variety.

And here’s he file right off the router. A little bit of handwork will finish things off in a jiffy.

Stay tuned to see how it will all fit together…

-dan

It is one thing to draw something cool and quite another to realise it as a full 3D object, often larger than life. In between there are many steps required to create it, safe and legal. I often get asked just what is involved. Most often it is not a difficult process although there can be many steps. The key is to have a clear vision of where you are going before you start the journey. Experience helps.

Our new house is a great example. The design is fanciful, somewhat unusual. It is pretty easy to come up with the concept. I’ll show our front window area as an example.

The actual building ended up a little taller but we have stuck with the basic design. The drawings done by the draftsman which we submitted to city hall for permit were pretty basic, the walls straight and they showed a basic vaulted truss. Notes on the drawing stated that there would also be some structural steel and it would be engineered. Most importantly the structure has to be neatly tucked inside the features we build. As I drew my first drawing I kept in mind just what it would take to build it. Experience comes in handy and the more the better!

The window frame was built from welded steel and laminated plywood. It was built around the window patterns we created on our MultiCam. I’ve shown that process in previous posts. The window frames were laminated up around those plywood patterns with many layers of treated plywood and inserted into the ICF forms. The engineer specified the reinforcing steel that was put into the concrete that was poured into the walls. Once the house walls were up the building looked like this a far cry from what it would look like when we were done. After the windows are fitted into place we will route and carve superbely detailed trim from 30 lb Precision Board. Detailed fiberglass reinforced concrete will be sculpted to form faux wood and rock work over the entire surface.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself… The beam work was the next item on the adjenda. It was more decorative than functional but required engineered structural steel none the less. I did up a drawing that explained what I had in mind to our engineer. He added many notes and small details showing how heavy the steel should be and how it would all go together. I didn’t really get any surprises here but the engineer’s notes and stamp made it official. The general rule of thumb is that if you can walk over or under it engineering is most likely required.

Once I had the engineered drawings in hand it was time to break out the welder and get to fabricating some heavy steel. I built two of the trusses – one for the front of the house and one for the rear porch.

While I was busy back at the shop Peter had a second welder humming out front. He was building the armature for the first of the giant trees with knarly roots that would flank each side. We do this work with 1/4″ pencil rod which will be covered with galvanized steel lath and then a heavy coat of fiberglass reinforced concrete. 

We’ll sculpt that to look a whole lot like massive and ancient trees that will flank the round window. The final step will be to paint it up to look totally believeable – just like the drawing we came up with back in April.

Stay tuned to watch this dream unfold.

-grampa dan

The fellows who are spraying the foam insulation in our new house are a startup company. I’ve known them for quite a while and they came to me to help them work up an identity and a dimensional sign of course. I first listened to their thoughts. The name of their company is Element Spray Foam. They had researched and trained extensively, done their homework thoroughly before starting the company. They were concerned about the environment and the saving of energy and were confident they could make an impact by providing proper insulation in houses which account for about 30% of the energy we use on a daily basis. 

When I sat down to create their logo I wanted to use green as a primary color. I also wanted to include a symbol that could be interpreted a number of ways. I thought of a leaf, a tree, a drop of water and a flame, signifying the environment, and the conservation of energy.  This symbol did the trick. Aside from the tweaking of the shade on the background I managed to nail it on the first go. These guys were a dream to work for.

The vectors were imported into EnRoute and then the fun began as I thought of ways to create their dimensional sign. I wanted the symbol to be dimensional of course. Creating it looked simple but involved a number of steps.

  First I created a leaf shape, mirroring the one vector that flowed along the stem of the one in the logo. This shape would be used to create a perfect teardrop shape.  Then I created a flat, zero height relief of the leaf shape with the stem cutouts. Once I had the reliefs I positioned them over top of one another.

I would use the merge highest command to create the shape I needed. The leaf shape with the stem cutouts was the base relief and was selected first.

Then I selected the full teardrop shape to merge to the bottom flat one.

Once the two shapes were merged I deleted the full teardrop shape to reveal the one with the cutouts. I then used the slice tool to slice off the bottom and reveal the shape I wanted. By doing this I could position the relief at any height I wanted without worry of having the crevices get in the way when I merged this shape with the background which I would create next.

I first selected the square outline to create a flat relief that was about an inch thick. Then I modified the relief by dropping the center portion down by half an inch.

I then added a texture to the background using my favorite ‘SPLOTCHES’. In a subtle fashion it would resemble spray foam. 

The lettering was next created as separate flat reliefs.

Then I merged highest all the separate reliefs of the logo.

Then it was ready to tool path and sent to the MultiCam. As always it would be routed from 30 lb Precision Board.

The sign looked pretty snazzy off the router. I’ll do a slight bit of tweaking on the stem with a little sculpt to booth things out there but other than that I was pretty satisfied with the result. The owners of the business were delighted. 

It will look even better in color I’m sure.

-dan

One of the reasons we purchased a router almost seven years ago was to fabricate the custom pieces we would need for the house we were planning. It has taken those years to be able to afford to build the house.  But the wait didn’t hurt me for it allowed us time to develop our design skills and get to know both the programs and router a whole lot better.  We’ll be using the router a whole lot on almost everything imaginable. The exterior of the building will be a combination of routed Precision Board and sculpted fiberglass reinforced concrete. On the side wall of the house the stone work is much higher than the rest of the house because the ground slopes down in that part. The wall is large and has no windows. It needed some detail to fix that. The solution was to create some pilasters. The same heart detail will be included to look as if it has been chiseled into the stone. There will be six pilasters in all and this is the kind of detail that is perfect for a CNC router.

I designed the first test piece in a similar fashion that we did the others yesterday. The heart shapes are layered into the center. I’ve routed the outside edge on one top corner – also part of the test.

We built the underlying structure from treated plywood. Diamond lath will be stapled to this form and it will be mounted to the wall. Fiberglass reinforced concrete will be applied and sculpted around these to become the rock work appear like in the sketch above.

We will use EnRoute, Precision Board and our MultiCam to create plenty more such details throughout the house project to make it unique and original.

Stay tuned to watch it happen.

-dan

We’ve been struggling to come up with the details on the trim of our new house. Over the last months we’ve tried all kinds of things. Leaves, Celtic trim, Butterflies, all kind of things were tried, but nothing satisfied both Janis & I. Today I asked our son Peter to come up with something new. He took inspiration from the window shutters I had created almost nine years ago when we built the tower that houses our electrical and other services out front of our property.

Peter drew two drawings, one detailing the trim and another that shows a side view of the knees that will be under the soffits. Hearts are the new theme. Janis & I both loved the new treatment.

Once we decided to give the new trim a go we went out to the new house and did some quick sketching on the wall, deciding in the process where each piece would go. There was lots of trial and error, but it only took a little while until we had a plan.

The next order of business was to create a sample on the router. I created vectors for each piece full size. This was important enough to do up some pieces using Precision board. These samples will most likely be used to experiment with paint colors as well..

I started by creating a flat relief of the center panel.

I selected various hearts at random and then grouped them. These would be raised at different levels.

Once I has created separate reliefs of the hearts and bumped them to the appropriate height it was time to merge (highest) them to the flat relief I had first created.

The outside frame was created as a separate relief. I added a woodgrain texture to this area.

Then everything was put together to form the complete panel. This was tool pathed and sent to the MultiCam for routing from 30 lb Precision Board.

The square blocks were the next. I created two flat reliefs, one of the border and one of the center portion.

The heart was added to the relief using the dome function. By using the constant height control the heart would be a little flatter on top.

The horizontal woodgrain from my TEXTURE MAGIC collection was added to the outside border.

The resulting trim pieces were perfect for the n

ew house.

Soon the router will be busy for days, turning out the pieces necessary to go all around the house. One more piece of the grand puzzle is in place.

-dan