Wood burning, or pyrography, is a stress-relieving and versatile craft that allows you to get creative and add unique designs to nearly any wooden object. You can make personalized signs, wall art, and special gifts for those you love. So, how does wood burning work?
Wood burning requires the right kind of wood. Pine, birch, and basswood are ideal; avoid anything with added chemicals, like MDF. Sand the wood and use carbon paper to transfer your design onto it. Then, outline and fill in the artwork with a wood-burning pen. Start with a low heat for more control.
If you’re new to this craft, don’t worry. Let’s take a look at everything you need to know, including the tools you’ll need, the kind of wood that you should use (as well as those that you should avoid), and how exactly to transfer the design of your choice to your chosen piece of wood.
What Is Wood Burning?
Wood burning is the process of drawing something (a picture, a logo, text, etc.) on wood using a hot brass tip. In addition to helping you relieve stress, wood burning can bring out the artist within you.
Plus, the resulting artwork looks great in all homes, so you can also burn wood and give it as a special gift to someone you care about.
The Tools You Need
You’ll need a few different tools to get started with pyrography. These include:
- A wood-burning pen: There are two kinds of pens you can use — the common soldering iron-style burners, which have just one heat setting and interchangeable brass tips, or the premium wire pens that comes with multiple styluses and various heat settings, like this one from Craft Chief (on Amazon).
- A variety of wood-burning tips: With an assortment of tips, you get more leeway to make heavier or lighter marks along with different patterns.
- Aluminum oxide and a strop (on Amazon) to clean the brass tips of the pen
- A pen holder or a clay pot to hold the pen when it’s hot
- Pliers
- A Respirator (on Amazon)
- Finger guards like these from Singer (on Amazon)
What’s the Best Type of Wood for Burning?
While you can burn any kind of raw wood to use for pyrography, some are much better than others. As a beginner, it’s better to go for readily available woods. Once you get the hang of the craft, you can go for other kinds. Let’s go through some common kinds of woods to better understand how suitable they are.
Pine
Pine is one of the most common choices since it’s readily available and cheap. But even though it’s good for practice, the grain variations can make it difficult to get a nice piece. The grains cause a bumpy edge, making it difficult to shade.
Basswood
Basswood is a great option for nearly all small projects. Its grain is light and dry, and it has a consistent pattern. However, it’s slightly pricey and is limited in terms of size.
Birch
This is another great option if you’re just starting out with wood burning. It’s slightly harder than basswood and denser, which means that the wood-burning pen won’t glide through the wood easily.
However, it’s a good wood for burning, and it’s an especially great option for lettering, silhouettes, and signs. It’s less ideal for shading detail and portraits.
Birch has light grains and a consistent feel, which means there is no hard/soft grain pattern. Plus, you can find birch in all sizes and types like with cradles at the back, as solid canvas, and as large panels, too, that you can cut down according to the size you want.
Woods to Avoid
Make sure to avoid wood with added chemicals like pallet woods, MDF, and treated woods. Even though you should always wear a mask when burning any kind of wood, in particular, these woods aren’t safe to burn.
How to Transfer a Design Onto Wood
Before you decide to transfer the design onto the wood, make sure you sand the wood with 320 grit sandpaper (on Amazon). You can wrap the paper around a wooden block or attach it to a sander.
Hit all the areas of the wood. By doing so, the details will come out crisper and sharper. Remember to sand in the direction of the fibers. When you’re done, wipe it with a damp towel.
Once the piece of wood is ready, the next thing you need is a template. You can either make one digitally using a software of your choice, hand sketch it, buy physical stencils, or purchase digital ready-made templates.
Once you have the template, the next step is transferring it, and there are many ways you can do so. The easiest way is to use carbon paper (on Amazon). All you need to do is tape the template to the piece of wood, put the carbon paper below it, and just trace the artwork.
You can use a pencil, a tracing wand, or anything else for tracing as long as you put sufficient pressure to transfer the design. Once you’re done, you can erase the carbon marks using a sand eraser like this one from Tombow (on Amazon).
Techniques for a Successful Wood Burning Design
Before you go ahead and start burning wood, make sure you get a respirator mask (on Amazon) with organic vapor filters along with a small desk fan to keep the smoke away.
Also, make sure to use finger guards so that you protect your fingers from burning since you’ll be holding the hot stick for quite some time.
And finally, make sure you have the right wood-burning kit. If you’re just starting out with wood burning, a craft burner is a better choice. This one from Walnut Hollow (on Amazon) is a good choice. Once you master the use of these burners and feel like you’re ready to take the next step, you can invest in a pro burner.
With all the basics out of the way, you can now start burning wood. Here are techniques you should keep in mind:
Outlining
Outlining the artwork is important if you’re doing a lettering project or burning or filling a silhouette. It helps accomplish a number of things. For instance, it makes a barrier for the fill-in burn and it gives crisp and nice clean lines to the artwork. To get the best outline, make a universal (straight edge or skew) tip with a straight, long edge that can make straight lines.
Never use a round tip to outline the wood since it’ll create uneven and bumpy lines and edges. Also, make sure that you don’t put a lot of pressure on the wand when creating the artwork.
Go slow, guiding the wand over the piece of wood, and let the heat work its magic. Pushing the wand into the wood will only result in bumps on the edges, and it can even break the burner wand.
If you’re just starting to learn the art of wood-burning, start with low heat so that you have more control over the burn. Plus, low heat will help you prevent mistakes.
You can experiment with higher heat settings once you’re more comfortable with the tool. If your burner doesn’t have heat settings, you can adjust your desk fan to cool it off.
Filling in the Artwork
Before we discuss the technique to fill in the artwork, there’s one thing you should know: All artists have a different style for burning, and with time, you’ll also develop your own style and better understand how and what you like to burn.
So, don’t be afraid to experiment and try out new things, especially since the more you experiment, the more you’ll learn and develop your skills as a wood burner.
Let’s now talk about filling in the artwork. If you’re filling in lettering or silhouettes, texture is the best option since it adds a visual appeal to an ordinary piece of art and makes it more interesting.
Of course, you can fill in the space with a shader tip, but you can get a little creative and add some character to the art piece by adding some texture. Not to mention, texture calls out to the viewer!
But this isn’t the only option. Your goal is to fill in the silhouettes and letters and how you really do them is up to you, so just let your artistic skills take over and don’t forget to have fun.
Remember, there’s no wrong way of doing pyrography. And even though many people suggest burning texture on high heat, it isn’t really necessary to do so.