Considering purchase, looking for info

Hello all,

I’m considering purchasing an XCarve. I have been thinking about it for a while but haven’t pulled the trigger yet. I don’t own a business. If I could make money off this thing, then great, but if not I just want to make sure it will do what I want it to. One of my home projects I am working on is for my truck. I want to make some pieces that would be similar to floormats, but smaller. Maybe 8" square. So my question would be, is there a material that I can get that is somewhat flexible… like a weathertech floormat kind of thing? That I could carve a design/logo into? Or are all the available materials pretty solid?

Thanks for any info.

I have carved in linoleum for making stamps and it works very well. I imagine the material you are wanting to carve is pretty similar in hardness… maybe a little harder than my linoleum. But it should be no problem. As for sourcing your material, … I don’t know. Try looking for low density polyethylene sheets.

Thanks for the info. On the surface, this product seems to be used for woodworking, but it seems like it can be used for so much more. I’ll keep searching around to see videos and projects that people have done with it.

Here’s an example of a carve in linoleum, so you can see the quality. Prints and Poop (Kimberly's Corner) - #12 by KimberlyFranzen

That’s pretty cool stuff. I could see my kids wanting all kinds of stamps and stuff. I’m just thinking that if I get one of these, I’ll use it for a couple of little projects, the kids will want a couple of things and after about 6 months or so it will lose its ‘newness’ and sit and collect dust. I’m thinking that I would need to find a way to keep it busy, like come up with some products or something that I could sell online… nothing to get rich, but just to justify the purchase.

When I bought ours, I didn’t really have specific plans for it (we didn’t even have a house to set it up in, yet!). It’s one of those tools that we find when nothing else in the workshop works, we can turn to it. We made some desks for a care home last fall and wanted to do cable grommets that matched the wood of the desk, so I cut those on the XCarve ( Greetings from a newbie in Texas - #12 by KimberlyFranzen ). Actually, the shape of the desks had an inside corner that we needed to exactly replicate 8 times, and we didn’t have a good way to cut that, so we used the XCarve for that, too.

I dunno… we just keep finding reasons to use it. But, we have a workshop and do woodworking as an interest, so it isn’t a total stretch for us. And now that we do have a house, we’re planning a kitchen renovation and will be doing custom elements in there.

Many people use theirs to sell personalized gifts on Etsy. We keep meaning to do that “so it pays for itself”, but just haven’t got started yet. Too many other things needing our attention (like a leaky workshop roof!).

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Yes if you put on your thinking cap there many many possible projects for the X Carve.

Even just making gifts for family and friends is a great way to “keep it busy” , save a little cash on gifts and all the while learning new uses from it.

I started it as a side hobby to keep me busy on weekends and am now looking at it like a small income generator when I retire… (years away…).

Who knows… maybe you will be the floormat king one day…

@RobertWiglesworth take a look at some of my videos since you are just starting out. Most of my stuff is wood but I have cut acrylic and thin plexiglass. I also have a thread here in the forum. It might give you some ideas. The link is:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVWqe-RPxZc9G2tevx1vT9w

Good point! Thanks Phillip, I’ll check it out.