Upcycle Progress – Laser Cut Wall Plates

This week I took my 3 rough sawn blocks of spalted maple to the bandsaw to re-saw them. I used a plastic light cover from my apartment to gauge the distance from the fence to the blade, and then cut all the blocks parallel to their largest face to get as many usable sheets as I could.

Some of the cooler looking pieces, with saw marks that I’ll have to sand away along with burn marks post laser cutting

Because the pieces weren’t perfectly square, the first few slices from each block were tapered and extremely thin at one end making them only partially usable. Also, some slices had large portions of the wood that had decayed to a soft yellow color and was much softer than the rest of the wood. I decided not to use those pieces as they would likely break in use being so fragile and would be too unpredictable in the laser cutter. Otherwise, I am really happy with what I got out of the blocks and am excited to see what they’ll end up looking like.

All of the pieces (sans 2 big ones)

After resawing, I put all of the pieces back into their original spots and stacked what I had —some textbooks, a printer, and ski boots 😉  on top to keep the thin and somewhat fragile sheets from warping between now and when I cut out the covers.