So I teach at a high school in Louisiana. My students always have left over pieces of wood and I don’t like to throw it away. Recently I found out the guy who worked here before me bought a X-Carve and then quit. I have got the machine working and have carved a few different pieces in birch plywood. We have a lot of cypress wood left over. Mostly 1x6s and 1x8s. My students want to carve into this cypress but I cant find anyone who has so I don’t know how to set my machine. I tried a few times over the past few days and its cutting very rough. Cypress is considered a softwood but grows like a hardwood. Can anyone help?
What bits and feeds & speeds have you tried? Cyrpess is very stringy and thus you will likely get quite a bit of stringy mess being pulled up and/or tear-out.
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Brandon Parker
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I used an upcut and it wasn’t stringy. Upcuts are the only bits we have right now. The school is ordering more next week for my class. Its almost like the machine was jumping like the material was to hard to cut. Ill have to look to see the feed speed i used.
Hello Alyssa and welcome to the forum,
I have cut cypress a few times and used the 2 flute straight bit that Inventables sells and it cut good. The depth of cut was .1 inches, the Feed rate was 60 and the Plunge rate was 12. If the machine is jumping your V wheels may be loose. Where are you in Louisiana? I’m in New Orleans. Since y’all have a lot of cypress I’m assuming the school is in the South.
Thanks
Russell
Russell is right about the straight bit. Cypress is a soft wood and has a different grain and texture than other woods. I from Louisiana also. Depending on what you are carving, try using a downcut bit also. It will help if you seal the wood first to help keep the grain together.
I teach in Assumption parish so we pretty far south.
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THe machine only was jumping on the cypress material and nothing else.
Make a video next time you’re using the machine.