Cutting hardwood

Late this summer, my wife decided that the wooden table we had on our deck had outlived its purpose. Even though it was meant to be an outdoor table, it made it all of 2 years before the wood started to rot in some areas. Consequently, it had to go. So, I got to take it apart and since I did not really want it to go to the dump, I cut it up into pieces small enough to put into the trash or recycling. This is when I discovered the table’s legs were made of this exquisite and still good hardwood. Naturally, they encountered my miter saw and now, slices of the table’s legs are workpieces for my CNC machine and laser cutter.

The denser the material you cut, the more your machine needs to be rigid and your axes precise. As you gain more experience with various materials, you will find the feed rate for the denser materials, such as hardwood, will have to be slower and require multiple passes. As before, we are going to use a downcut bit because we want...