Custom Maple Blanks: Live Edge Kiln Dried Hardwood
Woodworking requires a lot of blanks that are then build upon for final project, in this case, CNCROi.com made custom maple blanks from live kiln dried hardwood.
When it comes to wood species, CNCROi.com works with them all, sycamore, oak, pine, cedar and in this case, maple!
There are many ways to make custom maple blanks, using our 5 x 10 ft thermwood is complete overkill, but for this specific project, it fit the production envelope perfectly and made the fun a little more fun than just booting-up the table saw to do the same work.
Of course, lots of chips, rather than saw dust, was created by employing CNCROi.com‘s full sheet CNC router, it does a fine job of making these custom maple blanks, just got to make a few measurements, a little more programming and it’s ready to go!
CNCROi.com has a variety of tooling to do just about anything using live edge lumber branding or cutting-up.
Routering wood does produce more scrap than using power or even hand tools for something like this but the size of the live edge and the custom maple blanks that needed to be cut out made no difference in the end.
This project went well without a hitch, this router might be a very powerful 12 000 pound beast but it’s actually a safer method of production of just about anything over equivalent power or hand tools to do the same custom maple blanks making.
The other reason why I choose to do this project using my router as well is because of the slight curve along the top of this piece, totally doable using other tools but with the router, it’s a one step process to produce the perfect exact blank in one step.
Laser engraving adds a whole other level of personalization when it comes to what can be done on live edge lumber.
CNCROi.com isn’t limited to using hardwoods or softwoods to make custom blanks from, we can do the same using steel, plastic, rubber, or whatever else you may need something of this nature made.
Additionally, there aren’t any limitations when it comes to size, thickness or volumes, you want 10 or a thousand of whatever, not a problem for CNCROi.com.
The left-over scrap from this custom maple blanks project will end-up in the fire pit, so it certainly isn’t wasted!
Although I have a vacuum system on my router, it’s useless for projects like this, nothing beats screws to hold things down so they don’t move during production, of course, nothing moves further because these are all held in place using tabs as well, which are cut out after the routing is complete for these custom maple blanks.
Corporate awards, business cards, hand-outs, or even jigs are all possible using wood of various types and species at CNCROi.com.
As the live edge slab of maple was being carved out, there was a minimum of dust because as our Thermwood router turns it into blanks, the dust produced is sucked up by our vacuum system.
Using a CNC router to do this type of work over power or hand tools means each one of these custom maple blanks is identical, except for the grain patterns present in the wood randomly as they are being cut, as such, a repeatable process is the best way to make this type of work as it can be done endlessly.
After each blank was produced, in series, I had to pause my machine, take new measurements and go ahead and cut another series, live edge is not straight or parallel which means that I can’t just program all the blanks into it and cut in one shot, small deviations in locations were required for optimal use of the maple slab at CNCROi.com.
It’s amazing how much work CNCROi.com has done with our router though the years using live edge lumber, having our Thermwood has increased productivity many fold but I was very happy just to have my first full sheet machine years ago when I first began going bigger at the shop with client projects.
This wood did also have defects in it which had to be worked around, another reason why I had to cut these custom maple blanks in series after fine tuning measurements.
You can see some pieces of blanks are being cut through the edges, this doesn’t matter because I still got a complete blank, the amount of scrap left over is to be as minimal as possible.
The reason why I’m so close to the edge is because I want to double-up the custom maple blanks on the other side, I had just enough material there to do this at CNCROi.com.
Flattening live edge is something I’ve done a lot of at CNCROi.com through the years, the nice thing about a 5 x 10 ft table is that very big slabs are no problem!
You can see the rest of the live edge maple doesn’t have room for blanks along the other side, so my goal was to maximize usage of material.
The reason why you want kiln dried hardwoods and softwoods is because otherwise, the finished custom maple blanks could be full of bugs and warp down the line, if it’s kiln dried, the bugs are dead and the wood has had a lot of their moisture stabilized.
You can now see the tabs on all four edges of these custom maple blanks, CNCROi.com has done a lot of live edge work using our router, generally it’s flattening for other customers to make tables and other products with.
If you need some blanks or some live edge work, contact CNCROi.com right now!