Wood Burning Art-Wood Burning Wood Patterns-Wood Projects-Wood Craft Kit

As a carpenter a few years ago I decided to start a new hobby one that had caught my interest for many years but I had never even tried. It would be Wood Burning Art or better known as Pyrography.

My first experience with wood burning art has quite a little story behind it but I'll make it real short.

How I began my first woodburning project was by just being creative. What I actually used was a propane torch and broken chisel to burn the names and marriage date into a set of Adirondack wooden chairs. I had made this set of chairs for a couple as a wedding gift. (by the way, they are still married today)

I was somewhat impressed with myself and thought what a great hobby this would be to learn to create something more exciting using the correct wood burning tools.

I began searching on the internet for some fun and relatively easy patterns to start my wood burning projects. I was able to find some free wood burning patterns and chose the fireman, which is shown in the pictures on the right, as my first project.

Online images and resources is where I began getting all my patterns for my wood burning plaques. I also have used some various articles cut from magazines as wood burning patterns.

There also are many good books on the market that have some really easy beginner patterns. More advanced patterns can also be found be searching through online resources. Its amazing I how quickly I advanced and began to find more difficult drawings that sparked my interests.

Once I had found some good ideas, I then purchased a 5-1 electric wood-burning/crafting tool to start this fun and unique form of wood craft.

When experimenting with burning on different types of wood, I found out that the easiest to burn on was the soft pine plaques found at my local hobby shop. On nice plaques I could proudly display them on the walls, if they came out acceptable.

So getting on to the transferring. I take the wood plaque and some fine sand paper 100 gird then 220 and sand with the grain of the wood giving it a nice clean smooth surface.

Next before I begin transferring the pattern with a piece of carbon paper, I take the pattern and set it on the wood to be sure it will fit. Then I carefully tape a piece of carbon paper and the image to the wood after cutting the edges to leave a border enough to tape.

Next I trace over all the lines with a tracing tool. Once that is all complete I remove the image and the traced lines will be left on the wood giving it a nice guide to burn.

Some more advanced burners do all their pyrography by free hand. So anyone who is a good drawer or artist could draw the image lightly on the wood or simply burn the image completely from freehand. Many wood burners use the carbon paper style of transferring as it helps to give a guide to center the image.

After doing some research I found that there are a wide variety of wood working tools to choose from. So the best wood burning tools, usually depends on the experience of the person learning or mastering the art.

I have joined several groups to see what other pyrographers are using for wood burning tools and some of the high quality art is done with temperature controlled sophisticated devices.

These advanced users can burn on any type of hard wood because the tools can get much hotter than the simple basic wood burning kits.

Light lines are made using a low temperature. Darker lines are made using hotter temperatures. Also the length of time the tool is left on the wood determines the darkness of the area or lines.

Different tips can be interchanged to help give the design of the image a more real like appearance.

After becoming comfortable with the light pine I began experimenting with different types of wood and found the harder woods like oak need a good hot tool in order to make nice lines.

Harder woods are much more complicated because temperature control is somewhat more difficult but not impossible. I tend to use the softer woods like poplar, basswood or pine although if not careful a project on soft wood can be easily ruined by leaving the tool on an area to long.

If a mistake is done then the work is not over. Something can always be made from a mistake for example turn an accidental dark burn into a nice flower.

The beauty about this type of wood burning art is that an image becomes your own by the little added touches you do to each new design.

After I have done a complete burn and am happy with the final finished image I sometimes like to add a small signature, initials or date to the project. If I don't do this on the front concealed in the drawing then I may add it on the back.

To seal the final wood burning project I like to use 2-3 coats of polyurethane. Lightly sanding the surface in between the dried coats with 220 sandpaper or finer.

Complete drying times vary but I like 24 hours between coats. What this does is seal the wood giving it a nice smooth protective coating on the wood giving a long lasting presentable piece of art work.