pyropierced bowl

Re: pyropierced bowl

Jennifer@Indy.USA

>Hi Bill,

I like it a lot. I've been wanting to try some of this kind of work. I have a coping saw with a fine blade and thought that's what I'd use but now you've got me thinking my burner might be the thing. A very nice piece. Thanks for the inspiration!

Jennifer

Re: pyropierced bowl

Garrett in Victoria

>Hi Bill

With so much pyrography on the board of late, a lot of questions have been floating in my mind.

I have zero experience with the technique, so these are very basic, but an enquiring mind would really like to know:

1) is there a lot of smoke and odour?

2) your burn-through bowl is really attractive. How long did it take to do the burning, and why doesn't the process set it alight?

3) what's it cost to get a good unit?

I have more, but will stop here for now.

Cheers, Garrett

Re: pyropierced bowl

bill dotten

>I bought 2 expensive books and did not get a lot of useful info out of them for what we do. I did decorate a few small bowls of light colored wood at christmas with leaves and other designs from wal-mart craft department stenciling plastic things

1)I have a large studio and heat it with blown air from a heat pump, and only a couple of times did I find the smoke irritated my eyes ocassionally blowing on the work did the trick.

2)I did it in about 1&1/2 hours. I had a piece of thin firebrick that I set beneath the workpiece to keep the bench from getting stained with condensed smoke/varnishy stuff. adjacent to the burn area there is some swelling of the wood and some sap boils out dark. I burned pretty hot and sometimes the edges would glow for a moment but never flamed though I do keep a spray bottle of water around.

3)After reading the literature and making a few guesses I decided that I needed 100 watts to drive all of the wire tips I wanted with quick recovery time. I settled on a wire burner at about $175.00 but there are cheaper.

prior to this I did some work with a small wal-mart hobby woodburner and still use it for many things. Real cheap and pretty good. I did need the wire tipped burner to pierce the bowl