No new photos yet, but it's not all bad news. I need to get a lttile less deflection in my stylus shaft, but I was able to deal with it. I really need better bits for this. I have some hogging bits and detail burrs and very little in between. But I used one of my detail bits and traced a scroll sawn ornament as shallow recess into a piece of poplar that did reasonably well. I just did a few odd parts of it to see that I could trace along both sides of a thin piece and trace around a few thigs and get the shape transferred pretty well. It did OK; not great, but OK. Getting less deflection will get me where I want to me. I want to rough out shallow relief and finish by hand.
EDIT - a little more; I was rushed by kids going to bed on the inital entry. I found that doing "guided carving" was the most effective way to use this set up. In other words, I held and used the hand piece to carve and looked at the stylus and pattern to give me direction. Keeping tight against the pattern was difficult. It was much easier to try to stay close to it, but not constantly dead on it, and then come back and clean up. When I get less deflection in the stylus, staying dead on will be easier. You can set the depths defferent and follow lines on a drawing and etch them into place, but you have to be creaful as nothing keeps you on the line and there is no eraser.
EDIT - a little more; I was rushed by kids going to bed on the inital entry. I found that doing "guided carving" was the most effective way to use this set up. In other words, I held and used the hand piece to carve and looked at the stylus and pattern to give me direction. Keeping tight against the pattern was difficult. It was much easier to try to stay close to it, but not constantly dead on it, and then come back and clean up. When I get less deflection in the stylus, staying dead on will be easier. You can set the depths defferent and follow lines on a drawing and etch them into place, but you have to be creaful as nothing keeps you on the line and there is no eraser.
