Engraving until a very thin layer is left?

[evansd2]

1/8" baltic is already pretty translucent.

Trick for inspecting plywood

The short version: use a really bright flashlight to shine through the plywood, and you can see inclusions and voids pretty easily, like x-ray vision. Longer: So, I’ve had a few cuts fail where inconsistency is in baltic birch plywood that I got at the local art store caused the pieces to not be fully cut. Upon inspection, it seems pretty obvious that there was a knot in the central sandwiched layer. So I took a bright flashlight and looked through my 1/8 inch plywood, and found some surprisi…

If I were going to do it, I would instead use 1/16" maple hardwood (more consistent, no hidden knots etc) and glue it to a cutout layer behind it, which I would paint black to prevent all light transmission. That way you’d have really consistent thickness and light transmission with crisp borders.

I would use transfer tape like you would for vinyl to get the alignment right.