ENROUTE ADVENTURES: Happy Horse Saloon

WELCOME!

It is hard to believe that it was only seven years ago I witnessed a CNC router in action for the very first time. I was fascinated and simply had to have one! Although I had been in the creative end of the three dimensional sign business for most of my life I didn't really know what I would do with one - but I just knew it could do fantastic stuff.

Through extensive research I quickly found out that with the relative simplicity of EnRoute, CNC routers were capable of just about anything imaginable. This journal will chronicle that journey to date and continue each week with two or three entries as we continue to explore just what is possible with this wonderful software... -dan

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Happy Horse Saloon - Barrel portion

The next sign in the long series for the Cultus Lake project is for the Happy Horse Saloon. I'll be posting it in two separate posts. It is to be round, layered and feature a fully dimensional cartoon horse head. The head will be hand sculpted. I created the basic vectors for the sign in Illustrator and then imported them into EnRoute. I scaled it up to the right size.

The routing file for this sign would be routed in two parts, each to be layered up separately and then layered and glued. The first routing file I created was the round barrel head in the centre. This vector file was created entirely in EnRoute.

I first created the rim of the barrel as a flat relief.

I then modified this relief by adding a shallow dome to the centre portion (not shown) and then modified the relief once more by adding a bitmap woodgrain.

Then I built separate flat reliefs of varying heights to form the barrel staves. I'll hand carve the woodgrain into them as it is faster than modelling it in the computer. If I were doing multiple copies of this sign it would be a different matter.