Bone and Tagua Nuts

Made on a Glowforge
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I’m kind of embarrassed that this little bag of bone slices that @drea gave me many months ago has been sitting idle all this time. Also, about the same time I bought some tagua nut slices (for you vegans) off of Etsy, and have done nothing with them either.

So today was the day. I loaded up my png files (most of the files were from the Dover Designs “Celtic Designs” CD) and engraved on them (settings will be in a separate file which I will link to). Interestingly, the bone turns black when engraving so no ink is required, but the tagua nut did not discolor at all. For the tagua nuts, Internetz recommends oil based paint rather than ink (which I believe, since the center tagua nut engraving was inked with Memento Tuxedo Black ink and it stained the unengraved nut as well). The oil based color that I used for the other two engravings was Delta Stencil Magic creme stencil color that I’ve had forever. Apparently it’s been discontinued but the same effect should result from using oil paints.

Bone engravings (pencil for scale):

bone
bone612×816 303 KB

Tagua nut engravings:

tagua1
tagua1808×635 350 KB

Tagua nut before and after inking:

tagua2
tagua2909×549 417 KB

I was amazed at the quality of the engraving on both bone and tagua nut. Thanks again for the bone @drea!

Link to settings: Bone and Tagua Nut Settings

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Those are spectacular! I’m more interested in the nuts…had enough “pee-yew” from the leather this week. :grinning:

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I’m guessing the nuts smell better than bone (which is less than leather, imo)?

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I didn’t smell either one. These are very tiny, shallow engravings. I was going for the scrimshaw look.

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Great! I guess I went a little deep last spring… Can’t wait to try your settings.

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Forgot to mention that I used my Seklema mat to hold down the pieces and it worked great! No shifting, no magnets, no nuttin’.

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I’m hoping Santa brings me one of those this year for paper projects – hadn’t even thought of using one like that!

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Very cool! I’m going to order some of those Tigua nuts.

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These are so cool!!! So amazed at what the Glowforge can do!

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These turned out really nice! What unique pieces!

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very cool. Love the results. I’ve been wanting to try the tagua nuts as well. So far I’ve been doing antler bits I have from sheds a friend gave me. I’ll need to try the oil based paint since it looks great on your tests :slight_smile:

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@cynd11 do you think that a Seklema mat would hold heavy/thick glass cabs in place?

And some of those photos make it look like the tagua nut has some subtle pearlescent or chatoyance. Does it, or is it just a trick of the light?

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I think it probably would.

No chatoyant I’m afraid, just a trick of the light.

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