A custom tool organizer

Looks like birdseye maple.

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I’ll take some :slight_smile:

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Bits can be sharpened but from my experience, it costs more than buying a new bit.
Not worth it for the cheap bits that I buy but perhaps for a premium bit.

i’m actually more interested on how you created the tool paths to follow the exact outline of your tools.

did you take photos and then create an outline from that?

I was wondering what you used for the brush material in the picture, I also like the wood. Where I live we also pay a premium for hard maple although I own a sawmill company so wood is generally not a problem with the species that grows in my area.

So now what?

turn it into a drawer that slides under your machine?

When I did my tool caddy, I traced the tools onto graph paper that had .25" squares. Then I scanned the paper, knowing the size of the squares, and scaled the image to fit a grid in Illustrator. From there I traced the outline, added .2mm offset and saved the file.

I haven’t had any issues with Easel resizing my artwork, so I just carved it as-is and ended up with this:

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I’ve had some success using the scanner on my 3 in 1 printer. A high contrast, black and white scan seems to do the trick. Include a known measurement so you can scale the image if required.
I haven’t tried turning such an image into a tool path as yet.

If you can, try using the drawing tools whenever possible. The automatic trace functions of most vector drawing apps are ok for creating vectors for visual presentation, but for the X-Carve, you need something much cleaner.
When the trace function runs, you get a shape that’s got tons of points, none of the lines are quite perfectly straight, and some of the curves can be a little bit janky depending on your settings. CAM programs like it better when there are fewer points and straighter lines. It makes a less complex and more predictable toolpath.

It takes a bit of practice to get the hang of it but in vectric’s v-carve (pro in my case) you can node edit the tracing.

I have done so with some scroll saw patterns that I have and you are right, trace programs insert more vector points than politicians have promises.

It takes some time to get them cleaned up. But if I wasn’t doing this late at night when I could not sleep I would probably be mucking up my brain with some shlock garbage on the idiot box so…

There are furniture and box makers living here “down under” that would contemplate homicide to obtain such Birdseye Maple. (Is my jealousy showing?)
Nice tool rack though!

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If you have a diamond grinding wheel. I just grind off about 0.050 or so on the end of a flat bit.

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CorelDraw does a superb job of converting scanned images, internet images into clean vector files, with previewing the results before completion. Includes smoothing functions also.