Pyrography is the art of decorating wood or other materials with burn marks resulting from the controlled application of a heated object such as a poker or pen tip. It is also known as wood burning. A wood burning pen is a very simple tool that has a metal end that comes in a variety of different shapes and sizes and is heated using a power supply that enables the user to create patterns and designs on wood, bone and leather.
I have 4 pens that I use, a skew tip that is good for shading, a razor tip that is good for straight or slightly curving lines, a ball tip that is good for any type of line work that goes easily in any direction like lettering and a spoon shader that is great for shading in smooth gradient ares. There several dozen different pen tips available for purchase, as well you can custom make your own tips, however these are the 4 basic tips that can be used to do nearly any type of design your inspired to achieve.
The pens are connected to a 10 amp power supply via a RCA jack cable from which the pen temperature can be easily controlled providing softer or darker burning.
For this design, I am working on a 1/8 inch thick poplar board. Poplar is relatively easy to work with because it is one of the softer varieties of wood however the grain can sometime be problematic because it is more dense than the rest of the board.
Here is a short video that will show you some of the process in real time including the final product.
I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about pyrography, if so, comment below and I will be happy to create more posts like this that go a bit more of an in depth discussion of the process involved including wood preparation, the ideal wood types for wood burning, design transfer, finished design sealing ect.
