One of the things I was excited about was using the Glowforge to cut out shapes that I could then follow with a flush trim bit on my router to make stuff out of thicker material. I got a chance to do that with my most recent aluminum ant hill project.
Cutting an accurate oval is hard with standard woodworking tools (unlike circles and rectangles), but with the glowforge it was a breeze. I just cut the oval size I needed out of MDF and hot glued it to the wood (some beautiful 3/4" Redheart). Then I rough cut it on the bandsaw, and finished it off with the flush trim bit:
I can’t wait to make some more interesting shapes, but a simple oval was a good starting point.
I also used this as a first attempt at etching without the crumb tray. I put the logo for my Etsy shop on the back of the base:
I really can’t get over how amazing this wood is, the pictures don’t do the grain patterns any justice:
