First Woodburning Project

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AudreyO

New User
AudreyO
I "sort of completed" my first wood burning project with a $20.00 woodburner I got from Michaels. I have painted before but am new to the woodburning. I have always been a fan of company called "Sticks" (if you google sticks it comes up). Dave sanded me a 1/2" well planed quarter sawn beech wood for me. I have no idea what that meant but he told me to say it :)

I had the most trouble with the curved parts of the letters. The burner did not move through the wood as fluidly as I wanted it to. Maybe a hotter woodburner would help?????? I am going to touch up with paint so that is the "sort of completed" part of my wood burning.
Audreys_first_woodburn.jpg



Again, it needs some paint touch up. I am too tired for the night. I also made some chicken soup but I don't have a picture of that. AND if you have any good names (and prices) for woodburners that will help me with letters, you can tell DaveO how nice it would be if he bought his wife one for Christmas. :gar-Bi
AudreyO
 

TracyP

Administrator , Forum Moderator
Tracy
Looking good Audrey. You have made a good start on this [STRIKE]habbit[/STRIKE] hobby!
 

DaveO

New User
DaveO
Hey Boo, you know I am impressed with your work. And if you keep making your chicken soup for me you might end up with a new burner for Xmas.
Dave:)
 

NCTurner

New User
Gary
Wow that looks alot different than the last time I saw it. Very nice!!! Well done and kudos to you!!! Dave now be a good husband and go get your wife some WW tools!!:rotflm:
 

AudreyO

New User
AudreyO
I just wish I did the letters better! That is the nice thing about painting and drawing if I am not happy with it I can go back over it. With the wood burning it is final.
 

Bas

Recovering tool addict
Bas
Corporate Member
Hmmm, I've done "woodburning" projects too, although more accurate would be to say "projects that end up being burned as firewood" :)

I think it looks great, love the colors and the overall design. :eusa_clap As for the letters - it took me YEARS to get my handwriting to be legible, and that was with pen and paper. Give yourself a break!
 

erasmussen

RAS
Corporate Member
Thats great for the first try :icon_thum
Keep dave sanding, I am sure we will soon see some really great things
 

christopheralan

New User
Christopheralan
I "sort of completed" my first wood burning project with a $20.00 woodburner I got from Michaels. I have painted before but am new to the woodburning. I have always been a fan of company called "Sticks" (if you google sticks it comes up). Dave sanded me a 1/2" well planed quarter sawn beech wood for me. I have no idea what that meant but he told me to say it :)

I had the most trouble with the curved parts of the letters. The burner did not move through the wood as fluidly as I wanted it to. Maybe a hotter woodburner would help?????? I am going to touch up with paint so that is the "sort of completed" part of my wood burning.



AudreyO


Great job! Welcome to the smokers club! A hotter burner would only kinda help. Lemme 'splain. A lot has to do with the wood. Soft woods burn better than hard woods and the grain needs to be subtle. Changes in the grain pattern can really mess up a burn. A low heat burner forces you to slow down, and make easy corrections before they become a problem. A pro-burner, if not used correctly, can RUIN your project. The correct wood, sanded to about 180 grit is a good start. I mainly burn on bass wood and birch ply. I have done pine (sucks) and oak (kinda sucks, depending on how it is cut).

I suggest staying with the burner you have, for a little while anyway, to master your skills. I have the detail master 4. It takes a while getting used to it, but I still do a ton of work with my low temp burner like you have.

Lemme know if you need/want any tips and tricks about patterns, transfers, or shadding. I can give some book titles that has helped me also.

Good luck!
 

rcflyer23

Kevin
Corporate Member
That looks amazing. I think it very cool. If that's your first I can't imagine what your 2nd and 3rd are going to look like.
 

JackLeg

New User
Reggie
They look great, Audrey! :eusa_clap:eusa_clap:eusa_clap

You should be proud, and ol' Dave should be even prouder!

There's talent in your family! :icon_thum
 

farmerbw

Brian
Corporate Member
Awesome job :eusa_clap:eusa_clap:eusa_clap You've definitely got talent, want a job? :icon_thum Sticks has come a really long way in the last 6-7 years, unfortunately their prices have increased quite a bit in that time as well, but more power to them. We've got a few of their pieces scattered around the house.

LOML started with one of the Michael's kits and quickly exceeded it's limitations both heat and tip wise. She's presently using a Colwood Detailer model, http://www.woodburning.com/toolshop/detail.asp?iPro=304&iType=17 , and loves it. The interchangeable tips versus hand pieces is a big plus and they have a large assortment of tips for different applications. Christoper and others have provided some good info and sources that will help you along your journey.

As for wood, Oak can definitely be a challenge and dependent on grain can really increase a projects time, but the end result is really good. We've had good luck on Poplar and Cedar as well but like most we mainly use BB for the bulk of our stuff.

The offer I made to let you try out our burner still stands if you're interested.

Again, nice job and keep Dave busy prepping stuff for you, LOML sure keeps me lined up with projects! :gar-La;

Brian.
 

DaveO

New User
DaveO
Brian I know that you and your wife do some work similar to this. My wife and I are debating the burn or paint first issue. How do you roll???
Also acrylic, oil-based, or dyes for coloring????

TIA,
Dave:)
 

farmerbw

Brian
Corporate Member
Dave, we usually draw and burn first and then add color. You can always touch up or re-burn a line if you obscure it too much with your color. But we generally start by putting down a base coat of WB stain, it seems to make erasing any left over pencil lines a little easier and also provides a more uniform color as a background. The intial coat of WB stain as a base and light sanding afterwards also decreases any grain raising with the coloration.

As for adding color we've used a little of everything. I'm pretty sure Sticks uses acrylic for their stuff but we've used very little of that as we try to show the grain as much as possible and don't think that's easily done with acrylic. In fact Sticks used to do more of that with their earlier stuff but we've noticed that their more recent stuff is more heavily "painted" than it used to and doesn't show as much grain or character, don't get me wrong it's still beautiful stuff but I prefer the older style.

We've used some oil based stain for a base coat, but due to it's tendency to "bleed" it's kinda hard to contain in specific outlined area, especially in small spaces. We're now mainly using General Finishes WB colored stains. We were using the Kids Colors cause they offered "brighter" colors like Pumpkin Orange, Froggy Green, Fire Engine Red, Sunflower Yellow....etc and then of course GF discontinued that line almost 2 years ago so we bought up all we could lay hands on. We then moved on to their Country Colors line as a replacement and wouldn't you know it they're discontinuing that line as well, or maybe they already have pulled it. :dontknow: I guess once we've used up what we have left of those we'll try their Milk Paint on for size maybe.

You can mix any of those together to achieve custom colors or shading as needed and we also layer colors to achieve different looks. You'll also find that if you're doing a large area the same "color" that has burned lines you can go right over them since the burned wood grains don't obsorb stain. All you have to worry about is pooling in the lines and if you can't wipe that out with a brush/sponge you can always touch up the burn. Aside from clean up being a breeze, mistakes can be easily corrected if caught in time with a damp rag. We also like the fact that it's WB cause it means we can work on it in the basement when/if the kids ever go to sleep and don't have to worry about odor. :thumbs_up

Sorry that's so long bro and I'm sure I didn't cover everything.:gar-La; But hit me with any other questions you may have and if I can answer I will. I'm sure some of the other guys will chime in with what's worked for them as well.

Brian.
 

AudreyO

New User
AudreyO
Thank you so much for all of your help and suggestions. All very helpful! Once I can get our unstoppable daughter to take a nap I will look into the websites posted for burning.

So I wanted too make the plaques for the horse barn I volunteer at and I thought that the dedication was supposed to be for the Butterfly garden and learned this morning that it was SUPPOSED to be for the Flag Pole area. Rats! Dave is laughing his butt off.
 

farmerbw

Brian
Corporate Member
D'OH!! :BangHead::slap: :qleft7::qright5: :eusa_doh:

Don't give up hope it may be salvageable with some careful sanding on Dave's part :gar-Bi. We've had fairly good success with "correcting" small errors. It'll be good practice. Also worst case Dave can rip off the bottom and you'd still have a very nice burning of an eagle on a tree. :icon_thum Perhaps he can rip and joint you a new "blank" for the bottom. :eusa_thin

Good Luck.

Brian.
 

Mike Davis

Mike
Corporate Member
I would suggest a Colwood Super Pro, the great thing about a professional woodburning tool is you can turn down the heat and go slow. As you get more accustomed to it you can turn it up a little and go faster. Also you can tune the heat to the wood, low heat for soft wood and higher heat for harder wood. The interchangeable tips really make it easy to burn different line thickness and allow more control for curves and lettering. The Super Pro lets you switch quickly between two burners, we keep one very fine and one heavy set up. If you are doing larger work and switching often this helps a lot. Get a couple extra tips.
 
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