This was an interesting project I made as an Xmas present for my mother. So far my biggest CNC carve yet coming in about 19x21 inches.
I poured a bit of epoxy around the butterfly to give it a bit of color and allow for some contrast between the butterfly and the frame. It's all one carve so the epoxy helps break it up and make it look like separate pieces instead of one.
Here's the pre-epoxy version below. It still would have been nice this way, but the little bit of color really helped the center stand out.
I had a nice chunk of mahogany I used for this. I like this type of wood because it's dense but still fairly light. It also changes color from the darker brown to the lighter gold depending on what angle you look at it, so it's an interesting type of wood.
And here it is just about ready to come off the CNC. After this one, I had to order some spare parts for some needed maintenance. After almost a year of carving, I started getting a little movement along the Z axis which caused some extra obstacles to overcome.
I've done a few 3D relief carves over the last year. Some have been just cutouts of a model, and some I've designed like this one with a frame as part of the model. If I had to pick between the two methods, this framed version always turns out looking really nice and it's easier to clean up and finish.
