Power of FLAT: Live Edge Walnut, Maple, Ash & Tulip
The Power of Flat for live edge wood isn’t to be underestimated, it makes projects more beautiful, easier to make and allows for wonderful finishing results.
CNCROi.com has flattened a wide variety of wood species, from Walnut and Maple to Ash and Tulip and literally dozens more through the years.
Each wood species has a different physical characteristic from color to strength and by extension a different result when laser engraved or finished.
For example, if CNCROi.com is making a custom corporate award, Maple is a wonderful choice because it’s strong and produces a wonderful brown contrast when laser engraved.
If instead, I made the same corporate award out of Oak, it would be a lot harder to see and not as strong because it’s a less dense wood and the contrast from the laser isn’t as contrasting.
So as you see, each wood species has a cost benefit relationship when it comes to custom production for our customer’s applications.
Another wonderful wood species CNCROi.com works with is Cherry, but some people prefer the dark brown to the redish brown that laser engraving produces.
As a result, knowing the application and customer preferences allows us to choose the perfect live edge piece and species for the given project our customer wants us to fabricate for them.
One thing that all the live edge wood CNCROi.com processes that’s the same though is flattening, if it isn’t flat, it causes production problems.
Why is the Power of Flat so important?
If wood isn’t flat and parallel, tabletops are different heights, a glass can fall because of an uneven surface, the cutting boards leave skins on fruit and vegetables because the knife didn’t go all the way through them or worse, corporate awards and custom cottage signs have different laser engraving results across their surface that distracts from their intended purpose.
Take a look at a whole bunch of different wood species being laser engraved into really cool real solid wood business cards.
Do you notice anything different? Let’s try more…
Anything? Let’s try more…
Notice that they all have a different density in smoke, the smoke is what’s producing the contrast and when CNCROi.com performs laser engraving on wood, the depth we achieve (amount of smoke produced) varies based on the density of the wood itself.
Put another way, the grain patterns in the wood affect the laser engraving contrast we produce using our CNC laser, now all those business cards were FLAT so it was a very good example of the slight variations between different species regarding contrasting results but how about something bigger.
Notice how you can see the grain pattern going through the piece, unlike CNC router flattening of the wood, our industrial laser doesn’t compensate for material density, a router just powers straight through while laser produces less depth where there is a higher density and vice versa.
This is why you can clearly see the grain pattern, especially after it has been laser engraved, which is not as visible with work that CNCROi.com does strictly with the CNC router.
Something that’s especially nice about working with live edge is that we can make solid tabletops and other large items by just gluing them together using dowels or biscuits after the lumber has been flattened.
Even when CNCROi.com makes custom plates, trays and other like items, we still flatten it to make sure everything looks perfect at all angles.
It might sound counter-intuitive but making flat tables is a lot easier when you have flat stock to begin with and then just do a quick pass over the entire wood to flatten all the seams while getting rid of the glue thereafter in one fell swoop.
As with all our of our live edge work, CNCROi.com does both sides, as there is no point in having one side flat and the other not as it defeats the purpose of wanting a flat table to begin with!
If this was to become a custom cottage sign, then we’d either stick it right into the laser and do the laser engraving after having a totally flat surface or just change the bit on the CNC router and carve into the wood what we wanted.
Even when CNCROi.com makes custom cottage signs right on the live edge, we still flatten it before doing the carving into the wood followed by paint filling.
There are endless possibilities when it comes to producing a wonderfully flat surface to work from at CNCROi.com, it’s a great medium to work with and when it’s flat, an absolute joy to process.
The Power of Flat also follows through on Ash that’s had better days, it not only makes it FLAT but it also cleans the surface right up showing the beautiful wood surface present on all live edge boards.
Take a look at the before and after shot below, you can see that this piece of live edge ash isn’t flat and how wonderful the grain pops after it has been cleaned-up with our CNC router.
It’s amazing what CNCROi.com can produce using flat kiln dried live edge wood and our CNC laser engraver.
There doesn’t need to be much surface warping to cause issues which is why all CNCROi.com‘s live edge is kiln dried, this means that the major warping is out of the wood and the flattening that we perform in the shop is pretty much finishing it’s life of warping after the wood has been finished properly.
Again, before and after, you can actually see the saw marks being revealed in the live edge Ash below that our CNC router is removing.
Have a live edge job using any species, size or application?
Contact CNCROi.com right now!