Adventures with photoVcarve

I’ve been playing with some software called photoVcarve, which will convert a picture (bitmapped, eg gif or jpeg) into gcode containing a set of lines of varying width. The result is something very like an old style newspaper photograph, but carved into wood.

I’ve had some pretty good results with taking light coloured wood (mostly plywood), staining it a dark colour, then carving. This means that the cut lines are white against a dark background.

I thought I’d try to experiment with doing things the other way around. I took light wood again, varnished it, carved it, then applied stain. The idea was that the stain would effect the cut wood, but could be wiped off the uncut varnished areas.

This is the very first attempt.

I’m quite pleased with this as a proof of concept trial. One thing I shall try next is to use a thinner stain, possibly just watered down.

The woman in the picture, by the way, is Rosalind Franklin, who discovered the shape of the DNA molecule.

Carving of Rosalind Franklin