I love wood although we seldom build our projects using that medium. Instead we carve concrete or other durable materials to look like wood. This means I am always on the lookout for cool wood grains we can emulate in our work. Wherever I go, I am constantly taking pictures of interesting woodgrains I find for reference. When we use our CNC router to create signs and features we also incorporate the wood textures into that work. This is done by using modified or created images of woodgrains. The 3D routing program would read the images and then create a digital file to create a dimensional version of the image on the routed piece of material. When we did workshops our students would always ask if our material was available for their use. Eventually, after many requests I assembled a varied collection of proven bitmaps to use with the routing programs. This eclectic accumulation was marketed through our website.

I've had plenty of feedback through the years from many who use these files and the overwhelming request was for a wood bitmap collection. For quite some time I have been working on a new collection of purely wood textures. Some are heavily modified images from my wood photographic reference file. Others are custom built images to be used for just this purpose. The collection will include modifier bitmaps to allow the woods to be easily and controllably bent, twisted or warped inside the routing program. The assortment is now of sufficient number to package them up and release them to market. I have another day or two at most of work complete the task. It will be called WOOD MAGIC and it will be officially launched next week. Here's a sampling...