|
Welcomes You! Functional Bird Houses Catch All Boxes Clocks of all sorts Cases for collections, etc Jewelry or other racks Workshop or other Signs Pendants Medical Key Rings For your office Utility Shelf Container Shop Tour - it all starts here Woodburning a tutorial Art versus Craft Meet the Wild Child of Wood Where to buy  or ... Order by mail or ... by phoneMore Artist Folks Home  All major credit cards accepted |
Wood products for the everyday folks Woodburning is fun! Depending on the project at hand, woodburning can enhance the work, or it can destroy it. I can destroy a project quite nicely, so as a usual but not always, self imposed rule, I burn wood only when a project necessiates the use of words, lines, or shapes. One of my product lines, medical, is almost all words. TOOLS NEEDED for WOODBURNING: Woodburning iron and holder, many choices are available; woodburning tips; sandpaper; carbon paper for tracing letters; pair of pliers; mask; small fan; good lighting; and your choice of wood. Pine and aromatic red cedar were used for this "how to". In the first image shown below, is my woodburning iron and the tip I use most often. My woodburning iron has a plastic handle, and a constant temperature.  The next image shown, is of a variety of tips used, for the woodburning iron. Note that the tip marked # 1, is slightly bent from use. I prefer this tip ... the stores must know that this tip is my favorite, because every time I look for a replacement, they do not have it! On occasion, I also use the tip marked as # 5, when I want a rustic feel to the item. Although I've used the other tips that are shown, they are purposly kept in my woodburning tool box - out of sight, out of mind. For storing your woodburning equipment, a child's modern plastic pencil box, works great.  Sandpaper is needed to get the carbon off of the tip. After 5 or 10 minutes of burning wood, the tip needs to be decarbonized. For this, I use a piece of sandpaper approximately 6" x 2", 60 grit, folded in thirds. This also helps to protect my fingers, as I do not unplug the iron to decarbonize - sanding the black stuff off of the tip. The tip shown below, is magnified, as I placed the woodburning iron on the scanner.  Often times, a tip will need to be changed. I do unplug the iron, usually, for changing tips. Because the iron is still hot, I use a pair of slip joint pliers to unscrew the tip. Close to the tip, there is a small raised bump on the iron. This needs to be pushed in, in order to swap out the tips. I hold it in, with the folded sandpaper, another safety measure for the fingers. A mask will help protect against any fumes, which may be emitted from woodburning. Some woods release with an odor, some do not. A small fan, situated behind you, on the side of your dominant hand, will blow any fumes away from your facial area. LAYOUT and BURNING of WORDS: Words can be freehanded; or put onto paper, with a desktop publishing program. This is very beneficial when a particular font is desired, and also for the sizing of the letters. After you have printed the words, cut your paper (and carbon paper) to the width of your project to be woodburned. Fold it in half to find center. Tape it, on both side areas, to the wood. Now slide the carbon under the paper. The image below was scanned without the carbon paper.  You may remember this image from Jewelry or other racks page  Trace over your letters with a pencil. Depending on the pencil lead and carbon paper used, you may have to trace a couple of times. For words, just burn using small, close together dots (see images further down). Practice will help you to determine, when you have burned small and deep enough. WOODBURNING - OTHER PROJECTS: If you want to do woodburning on very small pieces of wood,  a 2 inch clamp works perfectly for holding the wood, during the hand sanding process required for woodburning, and other projects.  The next image below, is the same piece of wood as was shown above. The ruler was not included in this image, as the reflective glare washed out the wood. No, that is not grass under the wood, but is a piece of green suede, that I put on top of everything I scan. Doing this helps to keep the colors natural and not diffused as much.  In the image just above, I did some deep and not so deep burnings, to show different effects. Examples of sizes are shown below, with the third image showing the two sizes together, used for this tutorial. This makers mark is two of my four initials and is always freehanded. Look at the dots.    To end this short 'how to', "Woodburning Jiggy's Way", are two images below, of what does not need to be woodburned. The first happened today. The second happened three years ago.   Thank you for viewing this tutorial. © Trisha Leary, Hollow Creek Woodcraft, October 7, 2007 aka Jiggy, JigSaw Mama, Wild Child of Wood |
Website live July 2008 ~ Hollow Creek Woodcraft ~ info@hollowcreekwoodcraft.com ~ Designed and maintained by TL - Hollow Creek Woodcraft
Each and every item I make, is handcrafted - one at a time, and is signed