Wood Burning Blanks

Wood Selection

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 colour allows for great contrast and shading. It can be easily worked into boxes, and craft items with relatively basic woodworking tools.

Basswood is reasonable in price, with very few knots and very dimensionally stable. You will never see sap pockets in basswood (unlike pine) that can interfere with your finishing process. Basswood "almost" burns equally well across, or with the grain.

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Eastern white pine is often used as well. It is soft and burns easily like the basswood but the variation in density between spring and summer wood makes pine a little more difficult to learn on. It is more difficult to "burn in" even lines of consistent width, particularly across the grain. Pine is a nice wood though, if you would like to incorporate the knots into the pattern you are burning, as an added feature of the design. Knotty pine cabinetry and wood burning seem to go together.

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Most hardwoods like oak and ash, are similar to pine in that they do not burn evenly across the grain lines. The woods are denser, so require more temperature and more skill to achieve pleasing results. Experiment on wood scraps of different species before you commit a lot of time to tracing on a pattern. Make sure that whatever wood you chose, it will give you the contrast and even burning that your are looking for.

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