I am replicating several exterior Victorian corbels. 2 of them are 3 or so inches thick and can be made with a 2D cut, one is closer to 5 inches thick and is more complex.

First question: how should I achieve the thickness?
  1. I could buy a 4x6 and cut it out of that, but that seems intimidating -- I'm not sure how to attach it to the SB bed, 6" might be too thick for SB, it requires a trip to specialty store with difficult hours. The wood choices were some really light weight wood that I think was Cedar but they claimed was Douglas Fir, or man made stuff like soggy PT or LDL. I also worry about cutting out pieces just to find a huge knot in the middle. Might be expensive, prices were unclear.
  2. I could glue together several Douglas Fir 2x12s (and maybe a 1" white pine in the middle for the 5" corbel) and cut corbels out of them. May be a little awkward to work with.
  3. I could cut many corbel-shaped slices out of a 2x12 then glue those together. This seems the easiest, however I fear the pieces will warp after I cut them and gluing them together might be a pain and may require hand planing to get them to line up. I know when I rip a 2x12 it twists and curls, I'm not sure if CNC cuts will do the same.


(I also tried laser cutting a pattern in plastic and following it on my router table with a flush cut bit at home, instead of going to the makerspace. The result was the router ripped a huge chunk out of the Fir and tried to take my hand off with it. I'm now leaning away from that method.)

Here are the cross sections for all 3. I painted the originals white, scanned them, and cut them out of 1/4" plywood for comparison since VCarvePro won't just let me print them...
20180504_190149.jpg

The 2nd and 3rd in the image are 2D designs, but the 2nd one has tight cuts I might need to to with a coping saw or something. Unless someone has advice on how to make those tight cuts.

Note the 1st design is 3D, only the widest 2D cross section is shown above. The top front and sides are beveled, and the front face has flutes:

20180905_091910.jpg20180905_091856.jpg

To cut the 1st corbel, should I:
  1. Just cut it 2D then taper it with a chop saw and cut the flutes with a chisel?
  2. Extrude it to 3D, add the tapers and flutes, then carve it with a ball nose or something? I've never extruded a shape and I've never done a 3D carve, so I have no idea if the results would be good or how long they would take.


Thanks in advance for your help, and sorry if this is excessively wordy. Everything has gone wrong with everything this week, so I may be overly stressing over this.