CNC a Live Edge Cribbage Board

When you're ready to make a cool looking board, like this piece of maple into a curvage board, it's a little bit different approach than just working with like a one by six where everything is lineal. The reason being we've got some neat stuff going on here. I've got this live edge down here. We've got some really amazing compression wood, some really cool quilting right there. I wanna make sure that when my cribbage board pattern goes on here, I'm optimizing that stuff. So it's different because when I put this on the CNC, it's not necessarily gonna be positioned where the Cribbage layout is parallel to this straight edge. It's gonna be more about what do I do over here so that I can optimize it. So here's what we are doing for you. I am providing for you the Varve pro file for a two hole Cribbage board and a three hole Cribbage board. So that's two files. I'm also providing the DXF for those. So if you don't have Varve, you can use the DXF file in your own software. The other thing I'm providing is a template for both of those boards. So let's look at my laptop here and see what the heck I'm talking about with this template. This Gizmo right here is the template. This is the template for a three hole board. That's what those three holes right there. Tell me. So what we've got, if I click around a little bit here, there's our three hole board. What's happening here is that this when I grab that outline and bring it here. So see what I did right there. I grabbed the outline from the template and I brought it to the three hole pattern to show you that what we're getting from the template piece is the outline of our three hole cribbage board. We don't need it here in this tool path. We're not actually gonna cut this line as part of our three hole cribbage board, but I just want to show you that this template that we're about to create is gonna show you exactly what we need in order to get our three hole template or our three hole board to fit on that piece of maple. So again, what we're giving you is the template for three hole board plus the three hole board plus the template for a two hole board. See that's got snake bite right there shows me it's for a tool plus the two hole board itself. For this video, I'm gonna work with the three hole. So here's what you need to do is I just cut this out of any quarter inch stuff. I have the template. So in my set up, I've got a piece that's five and three quarter wide, 16 inches long. The particular piece I'm gonna see and see is 0.22 thick. It's quarter inch material, it's slightly undersized so we can get out of there. And then in tool passing, we're going to cut the outside, cut it to shape and we're gonna cut that hole, that hole, that hole and that hole with a drilling operation. So at the end of the day, what we're gonna get is this, these are just so I can tell one template from the other. This is very important. When we go back and look at this view, this hole is the geometric center of this shape and it's gonna be really, really critical that we know where that is when we start doing our work on the CNC itself. So you have to have that hole in the exact middle of this pattern. I'm doing all of this work with an eight inch bit. So what I'm ready to do is save this tool path, these two tool paths and then we can cut this on the CNC. So I'm gonna save this stuff and then we'll go cut out this template and then we'll work our way toward being ready to make a Cribbage board. I've got my quarter inch material secured on the CNC that's quarter inch MD F. I've already xy zeroed my bit in the middle of that piece and I've already Z zeroed it to the surface of the piece. So now all we gotta do is run it. So now take that template cut through the tabs, send a little bit of excess off and then we'll come back and I'll show you what we're gonna do to take advantage of what we have here. Let's look at how we take advantage now of owning this template, this pattern again, on this piece of maple, there's some cool stuff going on. There's all this quilting right here. There's a really neat looking live edge and I've got, of course, this face and this face. So what do I like more better? I think I kind of think I like this face better as a starting point. So what I wanna do with this, what I do do with this is not just lay the cribbage board on there necessarily parallel to that straight edge because I don't wanna lose that cool quilting. I want that to be part of the board. So I'm looking at that. That would be pretty neat. We'd have a lot of quilting down here at the bottom. I'm avoiding the crack over on this side. I'm avoiding a crack that's up at that far end, but we can just keep manipulating this and seeing like, what do we get? What do we get? What do we get? And you could go so far as to like, all right, here's position number one, if I trace this is that the board I want, not horrible but not a lot of quilting. So more likely what I want is something like this. And remember that this outline that we're looking at is the exact outline that's created by the holes that are gonna get punched in here. This last line of holes is right there. So I think I'm gonna do something like this. Now, before I jump that off of there, remember when we were looking at the software, I talked about how important this hole is. This hole is the center of this shape. These are just to tell me this is for the three hole. This one is really critical. You gotta mark this. We're gonna need that when we get this thing on the CNC. So looking at that, this, I like that, we're gonna hold some live edge. We're gonna keep that, we're gonna have a lot of quilting. We're gonna have a cool color change up here. Now, the way we take advantage of this, the reason you gotta do this is when we come to the CNC. If I didn't have this shape defined, I wouldn't know where to put this on the CNC relative to the X and the Y axis. That's what this line is gonna tell me is how to get this on here. So that I am. In fact, when I start punching holes. It's not about cutting that outside shade. It's about punching our holes in that pattern. I've already done this work on another board. So let's have a look at the process of positioning this, securing it and making this whole pattern with a 1/8 inch up cut spiral. Get your board on the CNC and align the pencil lines with the axis of the CNC as best you can. I'm making the lines parallel to the grooves in the spoil board. Install the router bit, you'll be drilling the holes with and position it. So it's directly over one of the long edges of the Cribbage board layout lines move the bit on only one axis. In this case, I'm moving it only in the y direction. What you're looking for is are the router bit and the pencil line parallel to each other does the bit stay right on the pencil line as you move it. If they are, you're set, if they're not reposition the board, do the test again until they are. Once you know your cribbage boards in the right spot, secure it to the spoil boards. Remember we mark the center of the cribbage board pattern on the board. Now, you need to zero the xy axis by bringing the bit over that point and zero the XY and don't forget to zero your Z as well. Now you're ready to run the tool path. And I guess let those horses run cribbage boards require a lot of holes. This is such a great application for AC NC doing this on a drill press, punching every one of these holes and getting them perfectly spaced would be quite a challenge when that host of holes is done being cut, swap to the V bit Z zero and run the tool path for the skunk line. The CNC part of your cribbage board is done. Now, you can pull it off the machine, cut the ends relative to the cribbage board. However, you want get some finish on that baby and it's ready to play that piece I got in the video is another crazy cool piece of Curly Maple. A lot of alliteration going on there, that's the piece right there, sanded and finished. So again, what I did on that piece is I used the pattern to position the board so that I was optimizing what I had available in that really pretty piece of live edge maple Cribbage boards are a great CNC project. Great thing to monetize your CNC. People love these and I think they love them even more when you get this organic look from that live edge.