Native American Commandments Plaque

Bill Arnold

1974
Staff member
Messages
8,622
Location
Thomasville, GA
On our last trip to visit my wife's folks in Alabama, my FIL showed me a poster online of the "Indian Ten Commandments". He has a bit of an interest in native American lore because his mother was 1/8 Cherokee. Although history states otherwise, he believes the commandments are old as the hills. In fact, there is no record of such until 1989 when a company created a poster to add to their offerings. In any case, I thought making a plaque would be a good CNC project, so here it is.

NA10_201510a.jpg

I re-sawed cherry board and book-matched the pieces. The overall finished size is about 14" by 9". I created the design in VCarve Desktop. The text and graphic was cut using a 22.5° 1/8" etching bit at a DOC of .01" and 50ipm feed rate. The border texture was done with a 1/4" ball end mill at a DOC of up to 0.1" and feed rate of 100ipm. The final cutout was done with a 1/4" spiral downcut bit at a feed rate of 60ipm at 1/16" DOC increments to clear the 1/2" material.

The photo below is a close up of a corner showing the texture that gives the panel a natural edge look.

NA10_201510b.jpg


Finish is two coats of sealer, two coats of clear gloss and one top coat of satin - all Target waterborne products.

And, of course, I had to add this little bit to the back of the plaque using the same etching bit at a DOC of .02", then filling the cut with black Transtint in water before the last top coat.

NA10_201510c.jpg

Thanks for looking!

EDIT:
Forgot to add a detail about the text and chief. After the engraving, I sanded off the nubs and filled it a mixture of white acrylic paint; I added a couple of drops of TT brown mahogany for the text and some black TT for the chief.
 
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So, from playing around with my little laser cnc, some of those seem like pretty quick feed rates? Not that you are cutting very deep or anything.

How much running time do you estimate that it took?
 
So, from playing around with my little laser cnc, some of those seem like pretty quick feed rates? Not that you are cutting very deep or anything.

How much running time do you estimate that it took?

I didn't keep track of the exact times. The text and chief took about an hour; border just under an hour and 10 minutes to do the cutout.
 
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