The project
Made in 2023 as an art installation piece, this is a large relief sculpture of a woman's face carved into solid oak. The panel measures around 100 by 100 cm and is roughly 5 cm thick, glued up from many smaller pieces of oak into one large solid surface before any carving began.
The approach
The client supplied a design file of the face. A file made as artwork is not a file a CNC machine can cut, so it had to be reworked into a machinable relief: depths resolved, surfaces made continuous, and the geometry rebuilt so a cutter could actually follow it. That translation step is where a piece like this is won or lost, long before the machine is switched on.
How it was made
Getting a clean surface at that size was the main challenge. The machine ran a great many closely spaced parallel toolpaths, passing over the whole surface twice in opposing directions to cancel out as much of the visible tool marking as possible. Even then, a large amount of hand sanding was needed to bring the relief fully smooth, since a face shows every ridge that a flat panel would hide. The finished panel was then oiled, which brought out a warmer, richer tan in the oak and gave it a slight sheen.
Where the same approach works
Machining a face is harder than machining a building, because the eye knows exactly what a face should look like and reads any error as a flaw. That is what drives the doubled toolpaths and the hours of sanding. The same approach suits sculptural relief panels, feature walls, carved signage, and any large wooden surface where the finish has to look carved rather than machined.
