Wood Burning (Pyrography) can be use on wood carving to enhance there look, or as an art form on its own. Learning was can be done will simple wood burnings tools can help guide your carvings.Pyrography On Wood and More

When a friend, who is a high school art teacher, introduced him to state-of-the-art wood-burning tools in 1984, he felt as though he had "stepped out of the Dark Ages," as he described it. He loved carving and had wanted to find a way to achieve great detail in his work. With that discovery, he not only found a means to create lifelike details in his wildlife carvings, he also tried doing Pyrography on maple boxes, starting with his first experiment, which was to make and decorate a box where he could store his turkey things.

Wood Burning or "Pyrography" Tools

Most burners will tell you on the box, what their temperature range or setting is for that particular tool. The better quality burners will generally have a temperature dial that lets you adjust from 500 to 900 degrees. Lower quality Pyrography tools, typically have a one temperature setting around 600 degrees.

11 Tips for Successful Wood Burning

Watch where you grab and put down your Pyrography pen. It can cause quite a burn. Use your pen holder at all times to avoid damaging your work desk and your body.

Picking the Right Wood Burning Tools

The older units were like a soldering iron where the heat coil, pen and tip were all one unit, quite heavy and hard to handle. The newer units have a separate control box, (Pyrography tool), power line (heavy and light duty cables) and wood burning pen... thus the pen is independent and much lighter. Decide which pen is right for you, ..trading off price for ease of use.

Clean the tips of your wood burning pen

Clean the tips of your wood burning pen: extends life & improves quality or your work. There are a number of different ways to clean the tips of your wood burning pen.

Wood Burning Blanks

Basswood would always be considered the wood of choice for novice wood burners. Its fine and uniform texture allow it to be worked easily. It's light, almost white color allows for great contrast and shading. It can be easily worked into boxes, and craft items with relatively basic woodworking tools.

Pyrography is also popular as a way to decorate objects

Known in Victorian times as Pokerwork (because a red hot poker was used!) Pyrography is the art or craft of decorating wood or leather with heated tools. These days modern technology has brought us the Pyrograph or Pyrography Machine (known in the US as a Woodburner). These are mains powered, easy to use and you don't need an open fire any more! The example of Stephenson's Rocket above was done on a Janik Sycamore plaque by Terry Leveritt of Form Crafts. Pyrography is as easy or as difficult as you want to make it. Many just use it as a means of adding a name to a product to personalize it. The most popular products are eggcups, keyring/pendant/brooches and name plates but almost any wood or leather object can be personalized in this way. Woodturners or cabinet makers often burn their name or initials into their latest masterpieces. Special "brands" can be made to reduce the skill involved or to speed up the process if many objects need to be burned. Wood carvers use pyrography to burn feathers or other details onto birds and animals.