What are you making with the baltic birch plywood? That may impact my answer, but have you tried darkening the engrave after the fact? If you mask, then engrave, then with the masking still on apply dye or coffee or some type of stain, that might work. But without knowing the specific item you are making, I don’t know for sure that would be a satisfactory option.
The images I’m engraving are too detailed to safely stain after engraving. I tested it and the stain just bleeds into the wood even with masking still on.
I’m thinking if I finished my wood prior to engraving, it may help with the bleeding issue, but the surface would still have to be sanded afterwards and because of the detailed nature of it, the small details would still get stained.
In the end I think I found some settings and possibly a process that gets a dark enough engrave for my tastes… but I won’t get more wood until Friday, so I can’t test it just yet.
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and you have to use baltic birch?
(I personally would switch to something else. I love using maple most of the time, I have others, but it’s my favorite.)
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With masking on spray with clear lacquer. That will seal the engraved fibers and prevent wicking when spraying (or brushing) afterwards with the color coat.
Nope, not if you’re going to color the engraving. Prefinish will simply seal the top pores but when you engrave you’re cutting into the wood and exposing new open capillaries to suck up the color coat.
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