I’m new & awaiting my Journeyman to arrive. I do a lot of projects using whiskey barrel slats. My question is, can I engrave on the curved exterior surface of a barrel slat?
I know typically you must flatten your work surface before starting a project; trying to find ways to utilize leftover slats.
Of course you can carve on a curved surface! It may be more challenging but not unreasonably so.
The reason to flatten is to have a known height/thickness and (generally) squareness. Flat and square stock makes zeroing and work holding straighr forward.
Assuming you want a curved final piece, you can use curved slats with some additional planning. If you model the curve, you can do surfacing pass(es) to remove the uneven parts enough to bring the rough barrel slats down to the exact model surface and then do whatever you’d like to the curved face.
It makes modeling and setup more complicated as well as adding some difficulty to work holding, yet still do able. You may need to make a jig/fixture to hold the stock to account to the non-flat bottom or curved sides. Align the slat + jig/fixture to a square reference. Zero off the known, fixed reference and model with the zero at that point instead of the stock.
Thanks for the confirmation of being able to engrave on a curved surface. I purchased VCarve Pro with my Journeyman. Where can I find some tutorials on how to plan it out in VCarve to perform the job?
Vectric site has a forum much like this one and the main website has some really good tutorials on there.
Thanks for that tip!