For me, it's not the ability for the Compu-Carve to produce such a lovely relief carving as Lin's eagles - it's the potential the machine has to eliminate some of the more mundane woodworking tasks, especially cutting blanks and adding small details.
It's inevitable that some people will see this technology as undesirable and in many ways I have sympathy with their views. After all, woodwork is an activity that most of us feel should amount to more than factory milling. Nevertheless, we have to consider what sort of products people want; if we can get paid for giving them those products using a tool such as the Compu-Carve, surely it's an option we should consider? Of course, if we're producing woodwork for our own consumption we might prefer to use our manual talents. This machine gives us a choice of different production methods. Moreover, it expands the range of artifacts we can produce and may enable us to reach clients we couldn't access before. I'd rather let someone have a wooden drawer front with an eagle motif on it produced by the Compu-Carve than a fake stamped plastic drawer front.
What I think is fascinating, though, is the potential this machine has to add detail to wood blanks which a skilled scroller could then cut and join to make a multi-coloured piece of intarsia or segmentation. How this could be done without making the project look like a mish-mash is beyond my imagination, but I'm sure someone will soon develop a technique.
Gill
