Hi guys, welcome back aboard good old Spiffy—our 44 ft hurricane-damaged DIY catamaran project boat. This week I finally put our new Shapeoko CNC to work on the first “real” refit part: a set of clamshell covers for the drains under the boat. It’s not a glamorous component, but that’s exactly why it’s the perfect warm-up for the bigger stuff—especially the eyebrow project, where we need to remake two large, damaged/missing eyebrow sections and I really want to trust the process before we go there. I started with a quick 2D warm-up in Carbide Create (and made a little holder for my jog numpad), then moved into the 3D world with Fusion 360—aka one of the most unpleasant learning curves I’ve ever encountered. After a 3D-printed prototype fit test that was “pretty freaking good,” I CNC-machined molds out of polyiso insulation foam (cheap and available, unlike pricey urethane tooling board), sealed it with Duratec 707, waxed it, and used PVA as release. The CNC work was flawless, but my fiberglass layup under vacuum wasn’t: I ended up with bridging in a tight corner, mostly thanks to a dumb vertical lip I designed into the mold. The part is usable, but not nice—so next week I’m taking another stab at it (and getting dust extraction installed before this workshop turns into a permanent green snowstorm).