New Old Guy / Old New Guy

[Curly]

Hi from Florida. My name is Randy but most of my old friends call me Curly. My new friends have no idea why I would be called Curly. That ship sailed. I must say the new website and forum are impressive. I partially retired 8 years ago and have finally thrown away my watch and my phone for good. I've been turning a long time and have been segmenting for at least 12 years. I bought 'Laminated Designs in Wood' when it first came out and made some cutting boards. I couldn't really see how to make a decent feature ring with a multi-generational lamination. I would sit at the table with colored strips of paper and drafting triangles trying to make sense of it. Lamination Pro is a godsend. Thank you Mr. Johnson. A new Florida friend offered to buy one of the old cutting boards. I told her I would make her one and dug out Rannefeld's book. I thought someone must have a new idea for a sled that didn't include siting wires to find the center of a lamination. A google search led me here. The laser setup parts are on the way to me now. I downloaded the Lamination Pro software and made a bowl to see how well it worked. I'm impressed and I've only used the 'southwest' feature. I have a bunch of questions but I'll leave those for later. I look forward to the learning experience.

Randy

 

[stuart johnson]

Welcome to the forum. I think you'll like Lloyd software. If you have any questions, answers or suggestions please don't hesitate to post them. You might also post some of your work in the gallery.

 

[Lloyd Johnson]

Curly,
After I bought Charles Rannefeld's wonderful book 'Lamination Designs in Wood', I became interested in multi-generation laminations just as you did. It is certainly a masterful book but the limitation to 30, 45 and 60 degrees frustrated me. Not to be deterred, though, I attempted to make some of his designs but they never turned out exactly like his drawings. That's when I decided to see if I could use the computer to virtualize the multi-generation process using 2D graphics. It didn't take me too long to see the problem - his drawings did not take the saw kerf into consideration. If you ever want to see this yourself, I added a configuration setting to allow you to also use no saw kerf. Go File > Options and you'll see this setting. One more change you'll need to do is to subtract his angles from 90 degrees as I determined to make my settings match the way the protractor worked on any of the sleds I had ever used. Once I used the 'no kerf' setting and the correct angles, my output was identical to his in every case. The effort that went into his book astounds me and I marvel at his effort.
I felt the same way you did about his sled and quickly decided there was NO WAY I would ever have steel wires anywhere near a spinning saw blade. I'm continually looking for ways to make simpler and more accurate ways to cut 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation boards at the exact target location. I'm experimenting with a couple ideas and believe that an 'ah-haa' moment is near.
Please don't be shy about asking questions and making suggestions. With everybody's help, I think we'll make Lamination PRO a great tool. I'm currently working on a free upgrade to it that will make it far simpler to use. It will take away as much complexity as possible while keeping all of its functionality. It's a bugger to maintain the code trying to synchronize the toolbar buttons with the buttons in the Action Panel for the different generations. Simplifying this will make it much easier for a beginning user and simpler for a pea-brain programmer like me to maintain it. :-<

Welcome to the community, Curly.
Lloyd