How to Use a Wood Burner
In this tutorial I’ll show you the basics of how to use a wood burner.
MATERIALS USED:
Something wooden (plaques or a box, anything you want to decorate)
Pencil
Wood burner (I use the Weller short barrel)
I use a little Weller wood burner with a few different tips, but there are a lot of wood burners available on the market. Which one you choose will depend on how much wood burning you plan to do. For this tutorial I just kept it simple and used only the point tip.
I did a fairly simple design of a sunflower on my box to keep the tutorial short, but a fun alternative once you’ve had a little practice, it to wood burn a rubber stamp. They can be quite intricate, so take that into consideration when choosing a stamp. You want something that you’ll actually be able to burn.
Stamp a design onto your wood with ink in a color other than black. That way you’ll be able to tell where you’ve burned, and what’s just ink. Then just wood burn over all the inked lines until you’ve replicated the rubber stamp’s design.
When wood burning, the easiest lines will be the ones you make by dragging the burner with the grain. You’ll want to take that into account so you don’t end up with those lines being deeper than the more difficult against-the-grain lines.
Any time you want a burn line darker in color or deeper, just burn over it several more times until it reaches your desired shade/depth. The hissing and smoking that comes from the wood is normal. Just be sure not to let the hot end of your wood burner lean against anything if you take a break. Instead, lean the plastic handle against a stand about an inch high (most wood burners come with one when you purchase them), so the hot end is in the air, not touching anything else. And most important of all, be careful to keep your fingers away from the hot end!
Video tutorial by Amber Reifsteck, The Woodland Elf
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