Plywood Power Carved Wall Art

I have always enjoyed working on wood projects but had never tried power carving. I had recently seen a few examples of some extremely interesting results and wanted to try it myself. The plywood contest was the perfect push to get me to take the leap. I also had a few un-used pieces of plywood (that had been used to test some stains) which were just sitting around that needed to be put to good use. I hope you enjoy this instructable and find some value in it. I have been really pleased with the result and expect to continue to try making larger and more unusual shapes with this method. :)

• Plywood - I used 3/4 inch birch plywood for this project but any thickness and type would work well.
• Wood Glue
• Clamps
• Pencil
• Sharpie
• Angular grinder
• Grinding blades
• Dremel tool with sanding attachments
• Sandpaper (80,120,240, 400 grit)
• Stain
• Sealer

I used two 13 inch diameter by 3/4 inch thick pieces of plywood. I glued the two pieces of plywood together with wood glue and clamped overnight. You could easily create a thicker project by gluing more plywood together. For future projects I will start with something about 3-4 inches thick so I can more easily create more height differences in the final form. But for this project the thickness is about 1.5 inches.

Once your glue has dried start to section out the area on the plywood. I wanted to evenly space out my carving so I divided my circle into slices - mmmmmmm pizza and pie...............

If I were to create a rectangle project I would have started with a grid.

After creating drawing the slices, I started adding lines to identify where I wanted the peaks on the plywood. I used pencil and erased a lot of initial lines (You can see some of the erased lines still in the pictures) until I had a number of lines that felt balanced and somewhat evenly spaced. then I redrew the lines with a sharpie so they was no chance I'd miss seeing them as the sawdust started to fly.

I started with carving with the angular grinder and alternated between a 4 inch grinding/sanding wheel and a 3 inch metal carving blade. Both worked well but the smaller blade was much easier to get into the smaller curves. I also tried to grind into the plywood at different depths as to create more character in the final work. Generally, I found the deeper I tried to go the more interesting the layers of plywood became!

I also found that the smaller size of the Dremel made it much easier to create more details and prepared the project for sanding.

I'll also note that as I was working on this project I began to dislike the perfect circular shape. I wanted something more organic and decided to take a risk in notching out the edges at the low points. I feel this really brought it to life!

I spent a lot of time hand sanding after working the plywood with the Dremel. I started with 80 grit and worked my way to 400 grit. As many of you know - this was a slow and time consuming process. I'm always open to ideas of how to more easily and more quickly sand small intricate areas. :) The pictures don't show much change but I can tell you the change in how the plywood felt (smoothness) was drastic. :)

I wanted this to be dark but I think I might have gone a little far so I stained and then sanded a little more and then coated it with a satin finish sealer. I added a number of picture to give some different views. Hope you enjoy the result. I'm looking forward to trying a much larger version next.

Find a favorite spot to hang and enjoy your new artwork!