Good Sunday evening to you! I hope your weekend was wonderful, the east coast had a lot of ideal weather today so I hope folks got out there and enjoyed it!

We are experiencing our learning curve here; dialing in the settings for the rubber stamps took some doing. We finally nailed it (third time is the charm!) but my ink pad arrived pretty dried out so the stamps could be better. Also, I should have used a thicker font for type that was so small. I was fearful that if I went thicker it would all run together but I think there is some room between the font I used and getting a font that’s too thick to be legible. I’ll tinker with that this week…lots of rubber to burn! But, the laser engraving of the wood mount for the stamps is absolutely gorgeous. It’s a really nice, deep engraving on maple which is a hard species of wood and appears to behave a little differently than 1/4” plywood. Here is the final video of the stamp cutting process as well as a video of the wood engraving.

We did a second block of maple when we expanded the design to fill out the 2×2 space and I didn’t film that one but it turned out great. Cameron re-centered the design so it wouldn’t hang over the side. Here are some stills.

I wanted to do the sewing machine in acrylic and it turned out really well. I think my sewing friends would like this one as an ornament or sun catcher.

Not all of the engraving went as planned today; this is the lot of the novice. Every cut teaches us something new. The lime green band had an issue with the design point of origin relative to the cardboard jig so it’s off. The lavender went perfectly and the light blue is a design I made with Cameron’s patient intervention yesterday. It came out reasonably well for a first effort I think.

And FINALLY, cutting cotton jersey on a fold. We did five or six cuts before getting the settings just right. Here is the last one. Blink and you’ll miss it!

Whew! Are you still there? Long post! We covered a lot of ground this weekend and Cameron even squeezed in some time to use the laser to make parts for the laser. He is grousing a bit about my effervescent flow of ideas and projects. I’m pretty sure I could keep him busy for many hours every day, especially due to the computer tine involved. I see why laser cut products can be a little pricey; the set up time is considerable and every image has its own quirks. We hope it will go a little faster as we garner more experience with materials. I’d like to do granite, marble, ceramic tile, and glass this coming weekend.

I’m told we are on the precipice of the laser itself being complete. Cameron has a long weekend coming up so I hope I will leave him be long enough to cross the finish line. He is sooooo close!