CNC joinery

4DThinker said:

The advantage of a CNC is that once you have a joint figured out you can easily repeat it as many times as you want. Even when the board thickness changes a little all that is needed is a simple re-scaling of the vectors, then recalculate.

4D

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Yeah, I know. But anything I want to repeat, I don't need a CNC for, I just make a master, and go from there. CNC is just not my cuppa.

Part of what I do is make canes. The shaft is the same in all, so just have to make them and that's simple, and quick, enough. The handles change tho. The outline, and I often sketch a design on them, which only takes a minute or so. Starting a handle design from scratch, means laying out the handle full-size, from a rough sketch. This doesn't take long, because parts of the handle don't change, and I have a template to layout those parts. The rest I scrollsaw out, sanding down to the final countours. So all in all, likely an hour or less to lay one out and finished. Then that is glued to another piece of 1/2" plywood, and when the glue is set, routed around and viola, a master. Takes me more time to drill the nail pilot holes in the master than it does to tack it to a piece of 1/2" plywood and rout out half of a finished handle. That piece is glued to a piece of 1/2" plywood, and later routed, giving me a finished cane handle. Then the parts of the shaft and the handle are glued together, and I have a cane. Been quite awhile since I have been able to get in the shop, so been designing. Right now I figure I have close to 100 handle designs.

Now, what I'm getting to. I'll post a picture of one or two of my cane handle designs. I'm wondering if you could figure about how long it would take to get a CNC, all the designing and whatever, to have a similar design ready to rout out. Ignoring any design, just the shape. I will post pictures of old builds, because not been able to work on making any of the latest designs. These are not what you might call 'delicate' designs, I normally do my routing wth a 1/2" bit - works for me. With what I do, a CNC would be wasted on me.

Oh yeah, I glue the paper pattern on the first half of the master, with any design that I picked for that handle, so I can easily copy it later. Some of the handles have no design, but a buyer can do it later, if they prefer. The colored cane is my test cane, and possibly the only painted cane I will make - unless I do one or two for myself. Any customer that wants one painted will be charged big time, because I found with that one cane that painting them is a real PITA.