Quick Tips For Wood Burning Success
Soft woods with minimal grain and a light color, like basswood or poplar, are easier to burn than hardwoods.
Pine is a challenging surface for wood burning. The light areas of wood grain are very soft and the dark area are very hard so it's difficult to get a consistent burn without pitting and unevenness
MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard) is terrible for wood burning because it is not wood; it's a compressed mixture of glue and wood particles and it's full of chemicals that are not safe to burn.
Before starting to wood burn you need to prepare your wood. Start with a coarse sand paper 100 or 150 grit to remove all the big ridges and then sand again with a finer grit sand paper 220 or higher to get a very smooth surface. The tip of the wood burner will glide more smoothly on a sanded piece of wood so you will get cleaner lines and smoother shading.
When drawing or tracing your design be aware of the wood grain so that it flows with your piece. Look to ensure that any knots or dark areas will not detract from your design.
Let the wood burning pen do the work; don't force it. Too much pressure can bend hot tips. Too much pressure can create blobs in the middle of your lines. Try an experiment and see how far from the wood you can hold the tip and still make a mark. You will see that just hovering over the surface works.
Use a small pair of pliers or tweezers to remove hot tips safely and easily. Place hot tips in a small glass or metal dish to cool. Even though cool tips can be handled safely, use pliers or tweezers to insert them into the barrel of a hot tool.
Try out new steps and techniques on a sample board cut from the same material you're burning. Practice with different tips to see how they burn and what types of lines and patterns they create. Create lines at different temperature settings and label them so you know what color will be produced.
Use a sample board to try out different watercolor washes, colored pencils, markers, or paints because the yellow hues of the wood will affect how the eye sees the color and thin watercolor or markers will show the wood grain.
