Yesterday the temporary floor which we worked on to build the 'London roofline' came down. I could then size up exactly how I would build the new fireplace facade. After looking things over I decided I would use a wood frame for the bulk of the construction and welded steel for the bits around the fireplace opening. All will be covered with a layer of sculpted concrete. I fastened a piece of plywood to the center portion of the fireplace and hung the family crest as a point of reference. Everything would be scaled to this. Then I framed in the mantle using 3/4" plywood. I will glue the routed 30 lb Precision Board over this form.
I then used the wooden mantle form to create a 1/4" plywood pattern in two halves. It is just a hair under 11 feet wide. I took a picture of this pattern to create the vectors I needed by simply tracing it out. My client requested 'genuine' Old English lettering for the pub name.
I did the Lettering in Illustrator but it could have been done in EnRoute. I then brought the vectors into EnRoute to begin creating the reliefs. Since my board (and router) are only eight feet long I needed to break the file into sections to route. I drew a box and brought the bottom corners in to the angle of the bend. I also did an 0.7"outline of the mantle shape to enlarge the mantle front enough to put a 1/2" top and bottom piece of Precision Board on the mantle. I'll carve those in place with the die grinder. I deleted the original smaller mantle shape and used the jigsaw tool to create the three pieces of the mantle front.
The text was then centered on the mantle.
I created the three flat reliefs at 0.4" height. The I imported the horizontal sandblasted wood grain bitmap from my TEXTURE MAGIC collection. It stretched out to 12 feet without difficulty. I also stretched it out vertically to fit the mantle in a section of grain I liked. It was applied with a value of 0.2"
The lettering has a 0.3" border. I first created a relief using this border vector. This was merged highest with the mantle pieces. Lastly the bevelled lettering is added to the relief.
The tool pathing was done with a 3/8" ball nose bit for the rough pass and a 1/8" ball nose bit for the final.
I'll route the pieces in the next days, and then install next week.
-dan
