Well today I finally grew some balls and attempted my first 3d carve! I had bought vcarve desktop a few months ago but was always intimidated by it. After spending a few weeks watching their tutorial vids I finally felt like I picked enough up to do my first carve. I decided to do their gold tutorial and found a relative that liked to play golf so that I could use my test carve as a gift. I learnt allot from this and I am now addicted! I can’t wait to design a new sign and give it a go!
I carved this on a leftover piece of pine thst i planned down. I usef a .25 end mill for roughing and a tapered ball nose for finishing. I figured out i used way to much conservative settings and the carve took a good 6 hours.
Anyways What do you guys think? How do you think I should finish it?
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That looks great. You got some good detail with the leaves and the pocks on the ball. I have trouble getting pine to cooperate for me that way, it seems to be just too soft.
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Congrats on your attempt. I would say you were very successful. As far as finishing it? I’m in the same boat as you. New to Aspire and hardly any experience finishing. There are some very gifted people in this forum.
Seeing (post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 2 hours unless flagged) Makes me want to see what you said even more! 
Ya I will have to take a look at his video for sure! Never played around with glazes but I guess this is the perfect opportunity to try! Definitely going to be cranking up the feeds for my next carve. I was way to conservative on this one, mostly scared it would mess up and figured if it went slower I could catch it. The roughing pass however only took 2 minutes. The biggest chips I’ve ever seen from my machine haha. I want to invest in a 1/4" shank ball nose. I only have a 1/8" so I don’t want to push it to much.
To be honest Really surprised how good this came out using pine.
Damnit Phil, Is there anything you don’t know!
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Technically NO. Only he doesn’t know the difference between ANTS and TERMITES. 
Nicely done. I just received the Jerray bit, but I haven’t used it yet.
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yeah… it was off color… I rethought it.
You didn’t grow 'em… you carved 'em ball(s)
Looks great… killer detail
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All thanks to the blueloctite on my machine!
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He showed me that but they won’t ship to Canada.
I think the .ca one was like 80$ or something. So opted for the cheaper one that was a smaller shank.
Edit: found it for 30! It’ll be here Friday! Score!
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Now if only I could join your club and rock 200ipm!
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I found these on Ebay for less than $14, I bought two and they work perfectly. If you do not have a 6mm collet it is worth buying one just so you can purchase the less expensive 6mm shank tools.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/322235339063?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
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I agree, I bought a 6mm and 4mm collet from Elaire. The bits tend to be cheaper all over.
Did you do this on Carvey?
the new xcarve! 1000mmx1000mm
