I’m sure there’s some people wondering why I would do that…go through all the work of doing a light burn on something that I’m only going to sand down.  There’s a few reasons actually.

One reason is the toner issue.  The technique I’m doing is based on transfer…meaning that I create the image on my computer the way I want it, print it reversed, and then kind of “iron on” that image onto the wood.  The toner melts and gives me the images you saw in the previous post.

But the toner is black (usually…Sekhmet’s eyes are an exception here) and when I do the first layer of the burn with the fine point, I can’t see how much burn the wood took, because it ALL looks kind of black at that point.

Here’s an example.

Here’s Mut and Bes mostly done with the first layer of burn. Look at her hair. Each individual lock is toner, not burn. I haven’t done them yet.

So that’s one reason.  Another reason is that, it reveals issues going on with the wood itself that I couldn’t see previously.  Here’s a good example.

First off, I’m going to have to burn the border around the cartouche black, maybe.  Or maybe I’ll just make it 3-D, I haven’t decided yet.  But either way, you can CLEARLY see that THAT GRAIN IS A PROBLEM.  I didn’t know how much of a problem until I sanded it up.  I’ve got stripes going all through my work, and the ONLY way to fix that is going to have to be taking each pale stripe individually and fixing them with a longer burn as I go along…AND it will HAVE TO BE at a higher temperature with a flash burn, because the dark stripes in between take a burn much easier and the burn will spread if I leave the burner in one place too long.

The deeper problem is that this will have to be with a very fine tip, and the fine tips are far enough away from the burner that they cool off the fastest.  It may be a little tough.

Whatever.  It’s what makes the work challenging.