V-Carve American Flag

We each made an Rustic American Flag The main purpose was to have something cool to hang on our wall in support of our country. We are making a regular American flag out of a scrap piece of counter top that was collecting dust in our barn. In this Instrucable we will tell you exactly what tools we used and the process we used to do this project. Simply follow along with the instruction and supplies and you should be able to construct the exact thing in a timely manner.

Supplies:

1. Table Saw

2. CNC Machine

3. Spray Paint

4. V-Carve Program

5. 27.5" x 15" rough cut piece of oak

6. 0.50" V-Carve Bit

7. Painters Tape

Our first stepping was designing the product we wanted to make with all measurements of the product. We decided that we would keep the American flag proportional. In order to do that we had to scale down the American flag. Our final flag dimension will be 26'' x 13.70''.

In our V-Carve programming we used 2 different paths. First, we inserted our dimensions and a pic of the American flag. Then, we traced the vectors. We used the vectors of the flag to make the path. The first path we used was just V-Carve. We selected all 50 stars and went down a depth of 0.25''. Our second path was a profile path. We selected every other strip in order to get equal size strips. In our second path we went down 0.1'' and we used the same 0.5'' V-Carve bit for both paths.

The third was cutting two pieces of wood at 27.5'' x 15'' with the table saw. We made these two pieces a little big so we could easily clamp down the wood to the CNC Machine. The last picture is the piece we are using for the flag. We are making 2 of the same flags so we cut two pieces for this project.

For this step we clamped our board down. Then, we plugged the flash drive into the CNC with our downloaded programming. We then put the 0.5'' V-Carve bit into the machine. Finally, we it the hit the run button and the CNC Machine ran its course.

Our next step we burned 6 out of the 13 stripes to give the wood character. We burned the stripes that would usually be white. We lightly applied heat with a small torch to give the wood a nice charcoal look.

For the painting step we first taped off the burned stripes. Then we simply put a sheet of plywood under our wood and painted the red stripes. We put 2-3 coats of gloss red paint on the stripes. Next we let it dry for a good glossy look. We took the tape off and saw the result of it looking fantastic. Next we taped off everything other than the square corner for the stars. We also put 2-3 coats of paint on for this as well. We took off the tape and the painting was done.

For this step we re-clamped our board down. Then, we plugged the flash drive into the CNC with our downloaded programming for the stars. We then put the 0.5'' V-Carve bit into the machine. Finally, we it the hit the run button and the CNC Machine ran its course. The finally product was amazing and it was great to watch the stars cut out.

For the final step we cut about 3/4'' off each end of the flag with the table saw. The part we cut off was the extra material that we used to clamp too the CNC machine. Once it was cut it gave the flag a nice clean edge. This wraps up the process of making a V-Carved American Flag. Thanks for reading our Instructable. Hope you enjoyed.