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 Post subject: Topo maps in wood
PostPosted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 9:56 pm 
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Location: Albuquerque NM
Ever since I got my router I've been planning to try a topo map carved in wood. Today I finally got around to finding a program to do the conversion (dmap2gcode), found a digital elevation model (DEM) of the land surrounding my house), played around a bit and soon had this:

Image

Colors are a bit funky - that's walnut. The piece is 4" square, 3/4" thick at the highest points, 1/4" thick at the valley bottoms. The vertical scale is very much exaggerated - the block represents about 2 miles square, but the height from bottom to top is only about 500'. This piece had finishing passes only in the horizontal direction. A second piece with both vertical and horizontal passes is smoother.

Takes about 20 minutes to cut.


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 Post subject: Re: Topo maps in wood
PostPosted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 4:51 am 
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Scale it for HO trains? Take a heck of a glue-up.


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 Post subject: Re: Topo maps in wood
PostPosted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 5:26 pm 
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Made a second pass on this today with a more interesting block:

Image


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 Post subject: Re: Topo maps in wood
PostPosted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 5:30 pm 
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Very interesting stuff going on there. Love that second picture!

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 Post subject: Re: Topo maps in wood
PostPosted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 5:50 pm 
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DRSTRIP: Have you done one in Baltic plywood? If so please post a pic. The bands in the ply and/or the glue lines would look like scaled elevation marks I think.

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 Post subject: Re: Topo maps in wood
PostPosted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 5:59 pm 
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newtooth wrote:
DRSTRIP: Have you done one in Baltic plywood? If so please post a pic. The bands in the ply and/or the glue lines would look like scaled elevation marks I think.


It's on my list of things to try. My next piece is a stackup of 1/32" rosewood veneer between 1/8" layers of maple, for the very reason you mention. But Baltic birch ply should be interesting as well (and easier to build up!)


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 Post subject: Re: Topo maps in wood
PostPosted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 7:41 pm 
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Location: Tyaak, Victoria Australia
Awesome! I love it, now I want one too..
eric


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 Post subject: Re: Topo maps in wood
PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 1:56 pm 
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The series continues -
here's one in birch ply:
Image

and here is alternating layers of 1/8" maple and 1/28" rosewood veneer

Image


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 Post subject: Re: Topo maps in wood
PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 8:25 pm 
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DRSTRIP: My goofy old eyes are a confusing tool to view this. To me there is an optical illusion. The feature running from 11 o'clock upper left to the 5 o'clock lower right with the two features at 7 & 8 o'clock have me confused :confused: Are those features valleys or ridgelines. All in all I like the maple and rosewood plaque much better. I originally thought there would be more contrast between the plies on the BB. Will you be able to expand the square to make a larger tile and do you have plans for where those tiles will go? Just for giggles could/would you post a pic taken at an oblique to the top of the tile?

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 Post subject: Re: Topo maps in wood
PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 8:30 pm 
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DRSTRIP: Sorry, I didn't look at the details close enough. The bottom edge of the plaques show the features as valleys :oops:

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 Post subject: Re: Topo maps in wood
PostPosted: Tue Nov 22, 2016 10:57 am 
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These are super cool. They would make great gifts. You could do maps of special spots people have, frame them and you've got a great gifts.


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