Questions, answered

A digital STL file that you download. Nothing is posted to you. The design is finished and ready to machine, so there is no modelling work left for you to do.

CNC routers and 3D printers use the STL directly: it opens in Vectric Aspire, VCarve Pro, Carveco, ArtCAM, Fusion 360, any other package that imports STL, and any slicer. A laser engraver needs the relief turned into a greyscale depth image first, which our Laser Studio app does from the same STL.

Yes. Scale it in your CAM software to the size and depth your material and machine allow. Most buyers scale a relief to fit the blank they already have.

If your machine cuts 3D toolpaths from an STL, yes. Detail depends on your bit and your material rather than on the file, so a smaller ball nose on a finish pass gives the crispest result.

The shape will. The colour and shading usually will not. Most product pictures are rendered previews, not photos of a carving, and they are shaded so the detail reads on a screen. A real carving is the colour of its wood, and its depth shows through light and shadow. That look comes from the wood, the grain and the finish, not from the file. A shaded look like the picture, such as a darker bird or background, is a separate finishing step, usually stain or tint on bare wood before any oil goes on. It cannot be added once the piece is sealed.

Usually. Each quote shows the deposit the maker asks for, most often 50% up front, and how many days the piece takes from when it arrives. You pay it to the maker directly, in the way you agree in the chat. When it reaches them, the maker confirms it on the job and you are told your ready-by date. The rest is paid as you and the maker agreed, often when you see a photo of the finished piece.

Yes, free, through Telegram. On your request page, press "Get Telegram alerts", then press Start in Telegram. New quotes and your maker's messages and photos then arrive there as well as by email. Send /stop to the bot at any time to switch it off, and /start to switch it back on.

Before the finish goes on, yes. Your maker posts a photo of the bare carving and asks you to approve the look. If you want something different, they send the change with any extra cost, and you accept or decline it in the chat. After the agreed finish is applied, it is usually too late: tint and colour go on bare wood, and oil seals it. A change at that point is new work, at the maker's choice and price.

Use Cut Local. Tell us what you want made and makers near you send quotes with their price and lead time. You choose one and pay them directly, and the finished piece is real wood, not a file.

A 3D surface model in which the design rises from a flat background plane, saved as a triangle mesh in the STL format. On a CNC router it is roughed out with an end mill and finished with a ball nose, which reproduces the surface detail.

CNC relief glossary →

Yes. VCarve Pro and VCarve Desktop import an STL and cut it with 3D roughing and finishing toolpaths; they cut it but cannot edit it, and one STL fits in a job. Aspire imports any number of STL files and can also edit and combine them. Carveco, ArtCAM and Fusion 360 open them too.

Step by step for each program →

Not directly on most lasers. Laser software works from images or vectors, so the relief is first turned into a greyscale depth image, where darker means deeper. Our Laser Studio app does that from the STL.

STL files for laser engraving →

A common starting point is a 1/4 inch (6 mm) end mill for roughing and a 1/8 inch (3 mm) ball nose for finishing; for small carvings or the finest detail, a 1/16 inch tapered ball nose or a 1.5 mm rest-machining pass. Each product page suggests bits for 8, 12, 18 and 24 inch sizes.

3 mm vs 1.5 mm ball nose, measured →

About 10 percent of the ball diameter is a common starting point. With a 1/8 inch ball nose that leaves ridges under 0.01 mm; ridges stay below 0.05 mm, which light sanding removes, up to about 24 percent. Finer than that mostly adds hours.

Stepover calculator →

Yes. Scaling all three axes together keeps the depth in proportion, so a smaller carving is also shallower. To fit thinner stock, scale the depth (Z) on its own. Very small sizes lose fine detail unless you use a smaller ball nose.

Scaling STL files without losing detail →

Close-grained hardwoods such as cherry, hard maple, walnut and basswood hold fine detail best. Open-grained woods such as red oak carve well but show their grain through the detail.

One design carved in eight woods →

Every relief sits on a flat backplate, so the software sees the full rectangle as the model. Give it a boundary around the carving and machine inside it. Our free outline tool makes that boundary as a DXF from the STL.

Free outline tool →

Usually because of lighting or finish rather than the file: a relief needs light from the side and a darker glaze in the recesses to show its depth. Too large a finishing bit or too shallow a scale also flattens detail.

The seven fixes, in order →

Paddle, at paddle.com. They are our authorised reseller and merchant of record, which means they are the seller for tax and consumer-protection purposes, they issue your receipt, and they handle billing and card security. We never see or store card numbers.

A Paddle company, and which one depends on where you are. United States: Paddle.com Inc., incorporated in the United States, at 3811 Ditmars Blvd #1071, Astoria, New York, NY 11105-1803, USA. Canada: Paddle.com (Canada) Ltd., incorporated in Canada, at 22 Adelaide Street West, Suite 3400, Toronto, Ontario, M5H 4E3, Canada. Everywhere else: Paddle.com Market Limited, registered in England and Wales, company number 08172165, at 30 Old Bailey, London, EC4M 7AU, United Kingdom. So a buyer in the United States is contracting with a New York company, and a buyer in Canada with a Toronto one. You can check any of them on Paddle's own buyer terms.

Card details are entered on Paddle, never on our site, and we never see or store a card number. Paddle is an established payment company that handles billing, fraud checks and tax for thousands of software and digital sellers.

Prices are shown in US dollars and the site can display them converted for you. Checkout charges natively in EUR, GBP, CAD and AUD, and everything else in USD. Any sales tax, VAT or GST is calculated and collected by Paddle at checkout based on your billing country.

No. You can buy as a guest. An account is still worth having because it keeps every file you have ever bought in one place, ready to download again at any time.

Straight away. A download link is emailed to you the moment payment goes through, and the same file appears in your account dashboard.

Yes, and it is free forever. Sign in to your account and download it again, or use the "Resend my downloads" page and we will email your links back to you. Keep your own backup too.

Indefinitely. Your purchases stay in your account, and re-downloading never costs anything.

Yes. Commercial use is included with every design. Carve, print or engrave it and sell the finished physical pieces, with no extra licence and no royalty.

Sharing, reselling or redistributing the digital file itself, in any form, including a modified version. The licence covers the physical things you make, not the file. Your download access is personal and cannot be passed on.

Yes. You have 14 days from purchase to cancel for a full refund, for any reason, and you do not have to explain why. Once a refund is issued your licence ends and you agree to delete any copies you downloaded.

Email jolly@digitalchiselco.com within 14 days with your order number or the email you used at checkout, or contact Paddle using the receipt they sent you. Refunds are usually processed within two business days and take 5 to 10 business days to appear on your statement.

Reply to your order email or write to jolly@digitalchiselco.com. A real person reads every message, and a direct fix is nearly always faster than a bank chargeback.

Yes. The free files page has a starter pack you can download without paying, so you can test how our reliefs carve on your own machine before you spend anything.

The bundle builder lets you pick 5 designs from $25. The membership is a single one-time payment that delivers a set number of files each month for the length of the plan. It never renews automatically and you are never charged again.

Ask on the request page. If several people want the same subject it moves up the queue, and requested designs are released to the whole catalogue.

One payment for a fixed term of 3, 6 or 12 months. Each month of the term you receive a pack of new bas-relief STL designs by email, and every pack also appears in your account. Nothing renews by itself and you are never charged again unless you choose to.

The moment your payment goes through, if that month's pack is ready, which it normally is. If a month is still being finished you receive a welcome email straight away and the pack email follows the moment it is live, usually within a day. You are never skipped.

On the same day of each month as your start date. A member who joined on the 12th gets each new pack on the 12th. If a pack was delayed, it goes out automatically the day it is ready, and every month you are owed is delivered, never lost.

Eight designs chosen so that no two are from the same theme: wildlife, faith, farmhouse, coastal, gothic and so on, never a design you have already had from us in a pack. Each pack comes with a branded PDF whose buttons download every file, plus a cover picture and the list of designs in the email and in your account.

In your account. Every pack of every term you have ever held stays there, with its download buttons, for as long as the site exists. Expired members keep everything they received.

Open your account and press "email me this pack" under that month. A fresh copy is sent within a minute. To stop abuse it works once every 12 hours per pack; the download buttons in your account work at any time.

Yes. Every design in every pack carries the same commercial licence as a single purchase: carve, print or engrave it and sell the finished pieces. Sharing or reselling the files themselves is the only thing the licence does not allow.

Every pack email and every pack card in your account shows the cover and the designs inside, with a picture and title for each. Packs are prepared ahead of time, so a month is never thrown together on the day.

Yes, twice: ten days before the last day and again three days before, each with a renew button. There is no automatic charge, so if you do nothing the term simply ends and your packs stay yours.

No. A renewal bought while your term is still running starts on the day the current term ends, so the two never overlap and the monthly packs carry on without a gap. Your reminders stop as soon as you have renewed.

Yes, and it starts at once. Buy the longer plan and it begins the same day; the unused months of your current term are added to the end of the new one, so nothing you paid for is lost. Premium benefits apply from that day.

A fresh term starts the day you buy, with its first pack sent immediately. Everything from your earlier term is still in your account alongside the new packs.

Write to us and we can pause it, for example while you are away. No packs are sent while paused, and when it resumes you receive every pack you were owed in one go.

Yes. Tell us the email you used and we add your term here with its original start date and the packs you already received, so you get only the months still owed and nothing twice. Your packs then live in your account like everyone else's.

Two extra designs every month in a separate bonus bundle, on top of the standard eight, plus the lowest monthly price of any plan and a 10% member discount on every single design in the catalogue while your term runs. Bonus bundles ship with every pack from October 2026 onwards; a Premium member whose first pack is an earlier month gets that pack's standard designs and the bonus starts with the next one.

Upgrade to Premium from your account or the membership page. Your upgrade starts immediately, your remaining standard months are carried over, and the next pack email includes the bonus bundle.

Within 14 days of purchase, yes, for any reason, and the same conditions as any digital purchase apply: once refunded, the licence ends and you agree to delete what you downloaded. Email jolly@digitalchiselco.com with the email you used at checkout.

The buttons are personal links tied to your membership, so a forwarded link will not open for someone else, and a pack that has not unlocked yet will not open early. Open your account, where every unlocked pack has a working button, or reply to the email and we will sort it.

Reply to any membership email, or write to jolly@digitalchiselco.com. A real person reads every message and can re-send packs, adjust dates, or pause a term.

Nothing. Applying, being listed in the maker directory and having a public profile are all free. There is no joining fee, no monthly fee and no subscription.

A credit is spent only when you send a quote on a job. One quote costs one credit. Browsing jobs, reading the buyer's brief, messaging a buyer after you are awarded, and completing the work all cost nothing. Editing a quote you have already sent on the same job is also free.

10 credits for $8, 30 credits for $21, 75 credits for $45. That works out between 60c and 80c per quote, and the bigger packs are cheaper per quote. Credits never expire.

No. Approved founding makers start with 10 free credits, so your first 10 quotes cost you nothing. You only buy more once you have seen the jobs for yourself.

To keep quoting serious. A buyer who posts a job should get two or three considered quotes from makers who genuinely want the work, not twenty copy-paste replies. The credit is deliberately small: it costs a spammer real money, and it costs you less than a coffee to win a job worth hundreds.

No. The credit pays for the quote, not the outcome, so quote the jobs that genuinely suit your shop rather than every job on the board. If a job is cancelled by us or turns out to be fraudulent, we refund the credits of everyone who quoted it.

The buyer pays you directly, on the terms the two of you agree, by whatever method suits you both: PayPal, Wise, bank transfer or a local method. We are not in the middle of that payment and we never hold your money.

When a job is marked complete, we charge 3% of the job value. It applies only to work you actually won and completed. No win, no fee. You keep 97% of every job, minus whatever your own payment provider charges you.

Yes, for jobs posted from 1 November 2026. When you win a job, you buy the design it is cut from at its normal shop price. The price is shown on the job before you quote, so include it in the price you give the buyer. You do not pay it up front: it goes on the same invoice as your 3% success fee, and the files appear under the job the moment you win. If you already own the design, bought on this site or on an earlier job, there is no charge.

Fees and design files accumulate on your account. We raise an invoice once they reach $5, or every 45 days, whichever comes first, and you have 14 days to pay it from your maker dashboard by card. Small jobs therefore do not generate a payment request each time. If an invoice goes overdue, quoting pauses until it is settled, and nothing else about your account changes.

Tell us before you mark the job complete. We do not charge a success fee on money you never received, and we act on the buyer. Agreeing a deposit before you start is the surest protection, and most makers ask for one on larger pieces.

Usually, yes. Every quote has a deposit setting, 50% by default, and you can choose 25%, 100% or none, for example for a small piece or cash on pickup. The buyer sees it on your quote before they choose you. Your "days" count from the deposit, not from the award: when it arrives, press "Deposit received" on the job, and the buyer is told the ready-by date in the chat. If the buyer changes their mind later, the deposit covers the work you have already done.

Say you quote a $300 carving. The quote costs one credit, about 60c to 80c. You win, and the buyer pays you $300 directly. Our fee is 9, and if the design file is $12 you pay that too, on the same invoice. Your total cost for that job is about 22, and you included the design in your quote.

From our own buyers. People find a design here, love it, and have no machine to make it, so they ask for it to be built locally. The design is finished and ready to cut, and its file appears under the job the moment you win, which means no design work, no revisions on artwork, and no chasing files.

Jobs near you, matched on the machines and materials you listed, plus any job where a buyer has picked you specifically after seeing your profile. You choose which to quote and you are never obliged to quote anything.

Yes, and this is the part worth building toward. Every completed job appears on your public profile with the buyer review, and buyers can send a request straight to you from there. Those direct requests still cost one credit to quote, and good reviews are what earn them.

You get a short email as soon as the buyer chooses, with the anonymous results: how many makers quoted, the price range and the middle quote when at least three quoted, your own quote, how quickly the buyer decided, and whether the buyer passed over the lowest price. We never share the buyer, the chosen maker or their price, and your quote is never shown to other makers.

Yes. When the buyer asks for shipping, quote one all-in price that includes it. Buyers compare quotes side by side, and the price they choose is the price agreed on the job, so adding shipping afterwards feels like a surprise. Say it in your note, for example "includes shipping to Wheeling, WV"; the buyer's city and state are on every job. If you cannot know the exact cost, use a fair estimate for the size and weight. If the buyer later changes something, such as a bigger size, express delivery or an extra piece, agree the extra cost in the chat before you start. When the buyer picked "either is fine", you can quote for pickup and offer shipping as an add-on in your note.

Settle it before you cut. Product pictures are shaded renderings, and buyers are told that a carving takes the colour of its wood unless they ask for more. Every request now states the finish the buyer chose, and every quote must say the finish you will apply, product and any tint included, for example "boiled linseed oil, 3 coats, raven tinted dark first". The buyer accepts that in writing. When the carving comes off the machine, post a photo and use "Ask the buyer to approve before you finish" in the job chat. Tint goes on bare wood before the oil, so that is the last moment a change is possible.

Yes, free, through Telegram. On your maker dashboard, press "Get Telegram alerts", then press Start in Telegram. New jobs near you, buyers who pick you, and buyer messages then arrive there instantly, as well as by email, so you can quote early. Send /stop to the bot at any time to switch it off, and /start to switch it back on.

Yes. In the job chat, use "Propose a change with a price": describe the change and the extra cost, or 0 if there is none. The buyer accepts or declines it on their page. Accepting raises the agreed price of the job, and the success fee follows that new price. Declining means you finish the piece as quoted. Do not start the extra work until the buyer has accepted.

The finish agreed in writing wins: the one in your accepted quote, plus any change the buyer accepted in the chat. That is what the buyer pays for. Changing it afterwards is new work, which you may decline or price as a new change. A deposit covers the work you have already done.

Skip the job. A buyer who picks "Custom coloured finish" wants tint, stain or paint on parts of the carving, and the job card says so. Credits are only spent when you quote, so passing on a job you would rather not do costs nothing.

Each won job gives you a licence to make that one physical piece for that one buyer. You may not resell or share the digital file, and you may not mass-produce beyond the job. That rule is what makes buyers comfortable handing you the file at all.

No. Taking a matched buyer off-platform to avoid the fee means removal from the network. The fee is only 3% plus the design file, so it costs far less than the reputation and repeat work you would be giving up.

Anyone who owns and operates their own CNC router, CNC mill, laser or 3D printer, and whose work photos are genuinely their own. You should hold whatever business or tax registration your country requires, and describe your capabilities honestly.

Any. The network is worldwide and buyers are matched to makers by distance, so the more makers in a region, the more local jobs get posted there. Early makers in a country tend to see the most work.

A few days. We review every application by hand, check the workshop photos, and email you a dashboard link when you are approved, with your founding credits already added.

Your workshop name, city and country, your machines and materials, your star rating, your finished-work photos, and a record of every job you have completed with its review. They never see your email, phone number or address. Contact happens through the platform.

Any time, and just reply to any email from us. There is no notice period and no contract. Unused credits stay on your account if you come back, and any invoice already raised for work you completed stays payable.