5 replies to this topic

[David Medeiros]

Just returned from a trip home to visit family on Kauai. While there I took my son for his first visit to Koke'e State Park, one of my favorite places in Hawaii. We stopped in at the park museum to look around and in the back I found an amazing piece on loan. It's a wood carving of the island from above, a perfect little wood terrain model and it looks too old to have been done by machine.

Its about 3' across, the carving is centered on the heart of the wood slab so that the tree ring radiate out from the islands center. The relief looks to be vertically exaggerated. Wood is checking in a few spots (a check is a crack that runs across the rings) but is held together by a solid steel band wrapped around the wood disc.

Looking from the North; looking from the West; a close up of the Na Pali coast

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[David Medeiros]

A few more shots:

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[MapMedia]

mahalo!

That is wicked cool. No doubt it will go for a pretty penny and reside in the foyer of an island estate. In the meantime, I hope it makes the rounds and gets people to appreciate woodworking and the island's ecology & geology.

[David Medeiros]

mahalo!

That is wicked cool. No doubt it will go for a pretty penny and reside in the foyer of an island estate. In the meantime, I hope it makes the rounds and gets people to appreciate woodworking and the island's ecology & geology.

Most likely not for sale... I'm guessing it has spent the last 30 or so years in some plantation estate. I imagine some dark wooded library stuffed with hunting trophies from far off continents, a tray of various scotches in one corner next to a large sepia colored globe. A few open windows to let the cooling tropical breeze in and a view of the sugar-mill at the bottom of the hill

This has me wondering how hard (or expensive) it would be to make a similar but smaller wood relief today using CNC technology? Does anyone know of a good resource for info on taking a DEM and creating a CNC usable tool map from it?

A quick look around online produced these interesting, but unhelpful links:
http://www.vector1me...ectorone/?p=112
http://www.scopulus....scopulus_en.pdf

[Matthew Hampton]

You'll want to checkout what L. Faulkner (et al) has created at Solid Terrain Models, Inc.. They not only use a CNC for cutting foam - but invented printheads that use the same DTM for elevation-based printing.

I imagine the Kauai model was first roughed out with a chainsaw, then hundreds of hours of carving later - the finished piece. This sounds like a good retirement plan! I can also imagine setting-up a shop in a dirt-floor shack on Kauai and getting to work...

[scopulus]

mahalo!

That is wicked cool. No doubt it will go for a pretty penny and reside in the foyer of an island estate. In the meantime, I hope it makes the rounds and gets people to appreciate woodworking and the island's ecology & geology.

Most likely not for sale... I'm guessing it has spent the last 30 or so years in some plantation estate. I imagine some dark wooded library stuffed with hunting trophies from far off continents, a tray of various scotches in one corner next to a large sepia colored globe. A few open windows to let the cooling tropical breeze in and a view of the sugar-mill at the bottom of the hill

This has me wondering how hard (or expensive) it would be to make a similar but smaller wood relief today using CNC technology? Does anyone know of a good resource for info on taking a DEM and creating a CNC usable tool map from it?

A quick look around online produced these interesting, but unhelpful links:
http://www.vector1me...ectorone/?p=112
http://www.scopulus....scopulus_en.pdf

...................

sorry for this "unhelpful" links...
but if you need more informations, let me know.

kind regards
scopulus

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