Had ago at milling/carving today on a bit of scrap wood and was very pleased with the result below.

http://www.cncdudez.com/smallkingfaceH1.jpg

What is the best wood to get hold of when doing this sort of carving?

If anyone wants the Gcode then feel free to download from http://www.cncdudez.com/oldwood.html

I picked this code up a while back and cannot for the life remember where I got it from but it was on a examples site and free to download along with a few other bits, if anyone recognises it, could they let me know the site, because I would like to have a go at their other designs they had.

Regards

Sean.

I prefer hardwoods when carving.
These woods all will work well.
Linden
Hard Maple
Mahogany
Walnut
Red Oak.
Cherry
All cut well on a CNC router, but each has unique characteristics, hardness, grain, color ,etc.

Maple is great, but also the hardest to cut.

Although it's not a hard wood I would tend to go with Basswood. It is usually very fine grained, uniform in color, very stable with regard to temp and humidity changes and is probably the wood of choice for most hand carvers. Did I mention it's also cheep (around $3.50 a board foot).

Steven

In the US its called Basswood, in the UK its called Lindenwood.

Thanks guys!

Will have a search on good old google and see if I can get some small block of Linden wood in the uk.

Regards

Sean.