# swimming sea turtles part2



## woodman12 (Feb 12, 2012)

After doing the sea turtle in basswood ,i then started the laminating of black walnut for the final 3 turtles.
The thickness had to be right on to match up with the dimensions i used to create the toolpaths.
Everything when pretty good ,the small turtle needed some repairs as the fins got quite thin
The three turtles took about 2.9 hrs of maching as you have to do each side rough/final then flip it and do rough/final
again.Also i needed tabs to keep the turtle in place and a long end mill and ball nose bit(3 inch bits),the cnc dips and dives for the cuts
I included a mock of of the base ,the arranging is not final some fine tuning is required
like the pieces of driftwood might be too high
And the turtles need sanding and some touch up grinding with the dremel and cutz all bit


part 2 of the sea turtle display - YouTube

all in all its coming along,just sanding and gluing and a bunch of laquer coats to finish
its a shame to drill holes in that live edge base,as it looks good with the year rings


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## Stick486 (Jan 4, 2013)

excellent work...


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## gmercer_48083 (Jul 18, 2012)

Stan, I just think it's amazing to see such artistry in motion. It must be difficult to program a machine to re-create the motions an artist has in their brain. WOW! Bravo!


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## pretender74 (May 27, 2011)

Beautiful work. You should be very proud.


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## dick in ia (Jul 23, 2007)

Fantastic work!
How long did it take you to program the CNC?


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## woodman12 (Feb 12, 2012)

*the turtles*

Its not that big of a deal ,i downloaded about 4 turtles in a *.stl format,i then used aspire or cut3d to create the tool path.
You have to experiment a bit when you make 3D,things have to align or the images will not match up.
It was a challenge but I had done fish awhile back and this was quite similar,i can post a picture of the fish swimming through reeds or grasses
Also that's why I ran the basswood turtle first as basswood is cheaper to mess up than black walnut, I think I used about 6 board feet of walnut.
The log end for the base was tricky as I had a piece(half),and I was able to re-saw it 1.25 thick and glue the two halves together with a real good joint(used 5 biscuit for alignment)
You have to have an imagination and see a picture to get stimulated


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## marecat3 (Nov 30, 2010)

looking good.


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