How to Make: Wooden Jack O’ Lantern on CNC | ToolsToday

How to make your own Wooden Jack O' Lantern (plans link below) using Amana Tool® industrial CNC router bits on the STEPCRAFT M.1000 CNC machine available on our website, toolstoday.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=shop-cart

The downloadable and customizable CNC plans are available on our website. It's a super fun and easy way to make the Jack O’ Lantern yourself!
toolstoday.com/wooden-jack-o-lantern-cnc-plans.html

Feed, Speed & CNC Running Parameters

Amana Tool 46176-K CNC SC Spektra Extreme Tool Life Coated Compression Spiral 1/8 D x 13/16 CH x 1/4 SHK x 2-1/2 Inch Long Router Bit
toolstoday.com/v-14528-46176-k1.html
RPM: 18,000
Feed Rate: 40ipm
Plunge Rate: 20ipm
Chip Load Per Tooth: 0.011"

Amana Tool PR1040C Electro-Blu Carbide Tipped Prestige 10 Inch D 40T ATB, 18 Deg, 5/8 Bore, Non-Stick Coated Circular Saw Blade
toolstoday.com/v-11877-pr1040c.html

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:

Today I'm gonna show you how I made these wooden pumpkins that are perfect for your fall decor. We do have plans available for these on our website, so definitely check those out with the link down in the description. Without further ado, let me show you how I made them.

Starting on a new project to make some wooden jack-o'-lanterns with the STEPCRAFT M.1000 CNC machine. Unfortunately, I'm making this out of cedar fence pickets, and some of them were wetter than I realized, so the material didn't cut very well causing a lot of fraying around the edges. And basically, the sawdust from this ended up turning into kind of like clay. As you can see here, it's kind of nuts.

We used dryer cedar fence pickets for the rest of the project, and everything went really, really well. So, as you can see here, we're cutting out one that is more dry. So, if you're doing this project, which we do have plans available for on our website, so definitely check those out there, make sure that you're using cedar fence pickets that are fully dry. So, everything went much smoother on the piece.

So, the compression bit has a up-cut portion and down-cut portion of bit. And that leaves a clean surface on the top and bottom surface of the material. As you can see here, everything turned out really nice. And we went through and cut the remaining pieces.

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I made this workholding wasteboard for the STEPCRAFT M.1000 CNC, which we do have plans available for on our website. And I absolutely love this setup. This is one of the main reasons why. Switching out pieces that are similarly sized is very, very easy. So, essentially, it's just those little cam clamps that hold everything against the fence, and that allows you to switch out the material very, very easily and very quickly. So, you have the same exact X and Y zero point so you don't have to reset that at all or change your zero position if you're working with the same type of material.

Now that we have the faces all cut, we'll move over to the table saw and cut down all of our pieces that we're going to use to make the sides of the boxes. I have a stop block on the fence to make these cuts nice and safe. We'll use some Titebond III wood glue to glue everything together as it is nice and water-resistant. I'll use some brad nails to hold everything together, and that works out really well. We'll get all of the sides fully assembled using that Titebond III glue throughout the entire process.

Then we'll just add brads to each corner to hold everything in place while the glue is drying. And then we'll add the back panel. Once the back panel is on, we can then add some clamps to each side just to ensure that everything stays nice and tight together. The brad nails help hold it in place while we get the clamps on. So, that is done.

We'll move through and do a couple more boxes and get everything fully assembled. I ran out of smaller clamps so I had to use some of the larger clamps in the shop to get all of these fully assembled. We went through and did the same process with the wider pumpkin box as well and got everything done. If you don't have a brad nailer, you can just use regular nails. Glue and clamp everything together then add the nails for reinforcement.

All of the boxes are now done, so now we can turn our attention to the lids. First, I'm going to cut a lid that is sized out to fit the top of the box. These are designed to be just the width. So, we just need to match the length of the box. Now we need to work on our lip pieces to make the frame around the lid. We'll make the long side first, which is essentially the length of the lid plus the thickness of two pieces of material, so that way we don't see ingrain on the front of the lid. So, we'll get those all cut down to the right size.

And then we can do the pieces that go in between the front and back piece of the frame of the lid. We'll use that and that is just the width of the material that we're using for the lip top. We can get those cut down as well. Down to the right length, we can now cut them to width on the table saw. This is just a one-inch cut to make the lip pieces for the lid. Then we can get everything all glued on using the same Titebond III glue and the brad nails. This makes for a really easy assembly and we can get everything all fully glued down.

Once that is done, we'll be able to do a little test fit. They're a little bit tight, so I just wanted to go through and sand off those sharp edges on the inside of the lid. That way, the wood didn't splinter or anything like that. With that done, I'll use some General Finishes orange dye stain to stain the lids and get those all matched.

After the stain is fully dry, it's time to distress everything. We have a sander with an adjustable speed. I adjust that all the way down. I'm using 220 grit sandpaper here. A higher grit will only allow you to sand off the top area. This will make for a natural distressing and turns out really nice in my opinion. So, we got all of that done.

Now the only thing left to do is to add a stem for the top. For that, I used a branch. I had a sumac tree that fell over and it worked perfectly for the stems for the pumpkin. So, I just marked out the center location and used a drill bit to drill that out. And then from the backside, we're going to pre-drill into the stem. That way, it does not split or anything like that.

So with that done, we can switch out for a Phillips head here and then get that screwed in. These are stainless steel screws, so this should hold quite well. And the lid now fits really nicely. So, it's totally optional and up to you, but I wanted to glue the lid on these so that way, I could lift from the top to get to the bottom to adjust the lights.

I didn't add a bottom to these as I don't want them to hold water or anything like that but I definitely love the way that these turned out. I added some color-changing lights to these and they turned out really nice. Definitely check out the plans for these available on our website. But that's going to do it for this one. I'm gonna let Caity do a bit of a sign-off. Hopefully, you guys enjoyed this one. We'll catch you guys back out here on the next one. Have a great day, everybody.

We got some wood pumpkins. And there's a surprise at nighttime.

Lamps?

Do you think so? We'll have to come back and see later, okay? Which one do you think's yours? Oh, yeah? Why that one?

Because it's the scariest.

It's the scariest?

And I picked the scariest.

Oh, yeah. Do you like them?

Yes.

All right. Now we're gonna fast forward to--

Nighttime.

What do you guys think?

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