Rainbow Tree


shanniganz

The rainbow tree is made out of 75 different layers of 1/8 inch plywood, all cut out on my 10 watt laser. I’ve always been interested in the layered or stacked cut designs and took this opportunity to both try the technique and see what I could do with it. I designed the project from scratch, taking a 3D model of a tree trunk and putting it into a slicer to give me the rough shapes to cut out. I did a lot of cleanup on the shapes to smooth them out along with designing the branches. After cutting everything out and sanding, I used Angelus leather dye to color the branches and glued the trunk and branch layers together. There is a 1/4 inch threaded rod running through the entire tree with nuts on both ends, making the entire piece completely stable and allowing the branches to be positioned or layered however you would like.

As with most things, it took longer to make and assemble than I thought it would, about 4 hours in design and another 4 in assembly, but it came out close to what I had envisioned.

The tree stands around 10 inches tall, and 14 inches wide.