What’s on your carving/embellishing bench?

[Jim Reynolds]

On the topic of Image transfer from my laser printer to acrylic gesso on wood.

I am learning how to use gesso on my plates and other turnings because it seems to simplify using watercolor pencil. Trying to use acetone transfer results in a mod podge. The acrylic melts and "eats" the paper. However I discovered that a xylene pen like the Chartpak AD Colorless blender pen works pretty well.

I have had good success with refilling these pens when they go dry by leaving the tip of the pen soaking in xylene that I buy by the quart at the local hardware store.

Caution: These pens are colorless but FAR from odorless. Read the label and only use them with a lot of ventilation.

Does anybody else use this? I'd be curious if there is something friendlier than xylene I could use.

From your description, I assume that you have tried and discarded as not helpful the pyrography technique of using heat to transfer the laser printer toner to your surface. If my guesstimation is incorrect, then this technique may be worthy of some investigation / experimentation. Benefit would be no nasty fumes, risk is that you might end up "burning" the surface.

Good luck!

 

[Joe Cornell]

I actually found a soldering iron with a smooth disk at the hot end sold as a "bunny burner". It wasn't very easy to use or very effective last time I tried it. It might not have been hot enough. What sort of pyrographic tip do you use when you used that method?

 

[Jim Reynolds]

Full confession, I know of this technique but I have not used it. If I were designing this experiment I'd start with something like this transfer/shader tip from Razertip.