Tree Slice Cake Stand

I recently helped a friend's son with a 4-H project. And it is the largest piece I've engraved to date! Hopefully the piece will be going to fair, but it was quite a family project. The tree slice was about 2 1/2" thick and 22" x 24"! It barely fit in my new machine! His dad cut the tree down and cut the slice. Then I think every one in the family took turns planing and sanding the slice to get it nice and smooth.

It was quite an undertaking on my part too. I had to do some things with my new machine that I hadn't done yet, like setting a new home position. The old machine and new machine have different controls, so I got to learn a whole new set of instructions for the new machine.

I wish I would have taken a few more in-process shots, but honestly, I was busy trying to figure out how to run the machine...lol. The wedding is this weekend, and I'm hoping the bride and groom will share photos so I can show you the finished product as well.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

It seems I learn something new every day with my laser. The more products I add to my shop, the more creative ideas I come up with for lasering. I recently added Engraved Wooden Spoons to my shop. For the first order, I just put them in the laser one by one and auto focused them each time. Luckily there were only 3 spoons to do. I recently had an order for 50 spoons and didn't want to engrave each one individually...so I got creative.

I looked for a way to engrave more than one spoon at a time and remembered the jig I made for engraving my wine bottle stoppers...I could do the same for the spoons! It was a fairly easy process. I drew the spoon in my software program to cut out the jig. My largest spoon is 14' long, but all the spoon ends are all the same size. So the jig works for the 10", 12" and 14" spoons!

Now I can engrave up to 6 spoons at once. This really helped the process go much quicker than engraving them one at a time! Plus, it gave me more time in between reloading to work on other projects (yes, I'm a multi-taskers!).

 I did find out after the first run that the spoons are very light and move around a bit during engraving. There is an exhaust system hooked to my laser and the suction moved the spoons a bit. Noting a little scotch tape couldn't fix...another learning opportunity :)

Have your learned anything new about your craft lately?