Ed Donnahoe - Beskpoke Shelving

I am a managing partner in an electronic recycling business that focuses on communications equipment. Woodworking is a passionate hobby of mine. I spent 35 years in the commercial tire business with two re-tread plants and three service locations. I have been in the communications industry for just over 10 years now. I have been “making sawdust” as a hobby since about 1987. I have known about commercial CNC’s for decades and have always wanted to “play” with one, but figured the cost far exceeded any hobby use. When Rockler started carrying the small “hobby” units I got excited about the idea of owning one but still couldn’t really justify the cost of the unit and honestly thought the programming would be a bit over my head.

About a year ago I started making display boxes which I really enjoy doing. I started looking at the CNC machines as a way to improve the quality of the craftmanship and speed up the process. So, as I started to research both the hardware and the software, I stumbled across the Vectric forum. As I went through the “galleries” and saw the projects that have been done I was hooked. I can boast that I have seen every project posted on both the VCarve and Aspire gallery as far back as the forum would let me go – 2008 I think. Of course, I didn’t just look at the pictures but read nearly every post in the galleries as well. I believe this actually helped to ease the overall CNC learning curve since it gave me a basic fundamental understanding of the language unique to CNC before I even purchased a machine. Not only did this research help me with this but it also helped me make my decision of what software package I wanted - Aspire. I don’t have or use any 3D modelling software at this point, there is so much that Aspire can do maybe one day I will be able to master it all

Currently I have the NWA Shark HD4 w/ Extended bed and h2o cooled spindle. I fired it up for the first time the last week of October 2018 so I have a solid three months of CNC-ing under my belt.

To be honest I haven’t seen or heard of any other software that can do what the Vectric software does. There are a few things I have been very appreciative of in respect to Vectric Software. First, the Software itself; it is fairly intuitive which makes learning it so much easier than it otherwise would be. Certainly, easier than I thought it would be. Second, the tutorials are excellent. I am not sure where the software would be without the tutorials. Great job to everyone involved in making them – especially Beki. Third, the staff support. From what I have seen the support staff is very proactive in solving user problems. I am always blown away when the staff jumps into problem solving mode on the forum without being asked. Not to forget the level of “community involvement” from the staff on the forum, even though that isn’t really in the company domain sort of speak, the staff participation on the forum really is a positive influence.

Not only has Ed got all the software and hardware to turn his ideas into reality; here at Vectric we are more impressed with how the Vectric community on the forum was the help and inspiration he needed to inspire him to get to this point. Now that we have learnt about Ed’s background, we had to ask him about the project that caught our eye. He begins by telling us why he needed to make this amazing shelving unit…

I needed a long row of shelves for my “man cave”. I have been looking for design inspiration for over a year but had not seen anything that would be functional and unique at the same time. As soon as I saw Michael Tyler’s Shoe Cubby, I knew that was the “look” I was after.

After downloading the free project off the Vectric website, the initial adaptation of the shoe cubby shape to the upsized cubby was quick and painless using the node editing feature in Aspire. Adapting the leaf carving on the side took a week of long evenings trying to replicate the effortless flow that Michael had achieved on the original design. The mechanics of changing it was easy and straight forward thanks to Aspire, getting the design aesthetics right was the hard part.

The lumber story is almost a story in itself. A few years ago, I was picking up some oak boards from the local lumber yard and there was a pile of big white boards in the middle of the floor. Of course, I asked what the story was on “the pile” and was told it was true 2x8 by 12’ Cypress boards that were special ordered and when they came in the contractor rejected them. Naturally I asked, “how much for all of it?”. He said $200 dollars and I said, “if you will help me load them, I will get them out of your way”. It is important to remember that these were rejects. I have used a few boards along the way, but these were warped and cupped and generally twisted so they have mostly just sat in the lumber area of the garage.

So, when planning the project, I thought about a few different hardwoods to use, but then figured out that one 12’ cypress board would make one upright and I already had the Cypress, so it was a no brainer to use it. It would not have really been possible to use the “rejected lumber” at all without the CNC and the ability to surface the boards as a slab. I surfaced all the slabs on both sides which took about an hour per side; I used a ¾” surfacing bit for this.

Cutting and pocketing the uprights was about 2 hours each, of course there were five uprights, so I easily have 20+ hours of CNC time thus far. Each upright is 42”x18”x1 3/4”. The shelves and backs are 48” long. The backs are ¼” birch plywood – made by cutting a 4’x8’ sheet in half at the 4’ mark and then cutting of 9” piece off the width. The shelves were 4’x8’ Maple plywood cut in half at the 4’ mark, then ripping 2 - 16” widths and a 14 ¼” width. I added a 4” strip of birch plywood under the leading edge of all the shelves for both a wider nailing surface for the shelf front and to add strength to the shelf. Of course, I can’t forget the hours of sanding just like any woodworking project. The parts were all assembled in place with glue and pocket screws

The machining was pretty straight forward. I set the project up for 2-sided machining and used the pocket tool path to cut in the shelf pockets as well as the pockets for the back. Flipped the slab horizontally and then used the pocket toolpath for the same pockets on the bottom of the slab. Then the profile tool path to cut out the upright. All of which were cut with ¼” end mill. The carved upright was set up as a two sided project with the top being pocketed as before and the bottom
v-carved with a 60 degree v-bit.

If there was one feature that helped me out the most within Aspire it would definitely have to be the node editing mode. It made easy work of changing shapes on this project. Although it did help having a great free project from Michael Tyler and Vectric to start with, so thank you for this.

Overall, I was very happy with how easy it was to take an existing project and quickly adapt it to my needs. If I were to do this again in the future, I don’t think I would change much at all, I definitely learnt as I went, but no major changes. One major thing I learnt with this project was mainly about the lumber. I was greatly surprised with how the cupped wood turned out after surfacing them – it has truly changed the way I look at lumber.

It’s clear to see that after a few months of CNC’ing Ed’s eyes have been opened to a whole new world of creative possibilities. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Ed Donnahoe for taking time out of his schedule to inspire us all with his story. Before we let him go, we had to ask Ed what projects he has in the pipeline…

At the moment I am in the process of making the shelf fronts. I am using the 2-rail sweep in Aspire and keeping with the same fluted leaf pattern. Hopefully these will fit well with the uprights.

As for the future, ideally, I would like to get on to building my display boxes, which is why I purchased the CNC to begin with. Unfortunately, my wife has discovered the magic of Aspire and my “Honey-do list” is growing rapidly. You will have to keep an eye on the Aspire gallery on the Vectric forum to see who wins the battle for the next project.