@Xabbess: Definitely the right place. I haven’t tried it but it looks similar to what we put on our materials.
Hair-on leather will be fascinating!
I received a leather sample in the mail today. It’s beautiful. It’s a 5 oz. natural side of vegetable tanned leather or about 5/16" thick. Pro-tip: Make sure your figures are clean or better yet, use gloves when handling leather. Amazed at how fast I smudged it up with my oily prints. It’s enough to be able to do some sample engraving and cutting with, but not a whole lot. Am awaiting a set of samples from another supplier. So this leather would be about $160 for a whole hide averaged out to 30 square feet.
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@marmak3261
I am not sure where you live, but here in Seattle there are a couple of leather supply stores that sell scrap by the pound. You might want to see if there is something similar near you.
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If only. I was in Seattle for vacation and spent my money on oysters. I’m in Missouri and 40 years ago there were 80 shoe factories including one on my home town where my dad worked. He came home with some cool stuff. The cats didn’t quite like the snakeskin harnesses we built for them. There might be two shoe factories left in the state. Another town I was in had a hat factory. Closed it down and left stuff lying around that you could see through the windows. I snagged a couple calf skin sides that are beautiful but they are chromium died. I found a very helpful supplier of scrap leather online and am awaiting the package of samples he’s sending me. Again. Sells it by the pound.
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Oysters are the better choice, as long as you are not trying to cut them in the Glowforge. 
Although that is an interesting thought, since no longer occupied oyster shells are pretty common around here…
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Laser Scrimshaw Oyster Shells! 
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This is a definite project for me. Menards has a pre-Thanksgiving sale of 12x18 bamboo cutting boards for $7.00. I got three will get more. Hard to figure what to put on them. Design on one side and recipe or handy kitchen measurement units. Definitely a ruler markings so I have a gauge to cut pasta and such with. Someone mentioned scanning a handwritten heirloom recipe card from grandma and engraving that on. Glowforge would be perfect for that. Will have to see how deep to cut so as not to make it hard to clean. I use stiff brushes always on my cutting boards. As to safety Harold Macgee says that wooden cutting boards are just as safe. Sure, can’t put them in the dishwasher. But I use them for veggies and save meat and fish for the nylon ones.
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SI received my second supply of leather samples today. All vegetable tanned. They are beautiful. These are small scraps that you buy by the pound. The Glowforge will be perfect for these since you can so accurately position the designs. So even having multiple odd shapes you can do it in one session. A very efficient way to use up scrap leather.
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Are you willing to share your source?
Yes, I will share. Just didn’t get to the post. Brettunsvillage specializes in this type of scrap leather and have been most helpful. Great for small quantities. You can buy by weight. They also have some good information on leather processing, types, weights, thicknesses and other info that are important to know. Make sure you ask for vegetable tanned. They also have lots of different information on leather working supplies, buckles and studs, etc.
4Hides is a bulk supplier. I have been looking at getting a full hide from them. An investment, but the sample I got was just beautfiul. It’s a 2"x2" square that will be enough to do some test cuts on when I get my Glowforge.
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Brother came for Thanksgiving and brought me two new ‘found’ things to try with the Glowforge. 6 small rectangles of tin (about 3"x4") and two larger sized pieces of thick glass. The glass looks to be from a two way mirror, though you can see through it from either side, so I don’t know how that would have worked. I know metal can’t be cut, but will the GF do anything with either of these? Also, I dismantled two old backup hard drives and removed the disks, which are really beautifully shiny. (I sound like I’m being hypnotized…) I believe they are made from a glass or ceramic, right? Anyway, if you masked them, could anything be lasered on to them?
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The glass could be two way mirror (is that the right name, since it is used for 1 way viewing?), the way that such windows work is that you have to have one side VERY dark, and the other side well lit. It actually sends half of the light through, and reflects half of it.
So in the well lit room, half of that light coming back is WAY more than the half of the light coming through from the dark room, and it looks like just a mirror.
Change how the lights are set up in the rooms on either side, and you change the “direction” of the mirror.
Thank you…that makes perfect sense. I don’t know if ‘two way mirror’ is correct…seems like that’s what I’ve always heard. I suppose, by changing the lighting it could be used as a mirror on either side…thus ‘two way’?
Was thinking of laminating up some different leathers onto some Baltic Birch ply.
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So you know how on a half-dozen occasions someone’s said “don’t cut glass mirrors!” and I’ve said “those aren’t mirrors when you’re a 10600nm photon.” Or similar. Basically what you think of as a mirror, isn’t, to Glowforge wavelengths.
Well, hard drive disks are VERY VERY GOOD MIRRORS to Glowforge, and I would strongly recommend not putting them inside. Glowforge is designed so that it won’t cause too much havoc, but it’s not going to do anything good either.
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Dang, I just looked up the materials in a hard drive disk, then saw @dan 's post. Oh well, I’ll have to find some other use for my old hard drives.
Try to be patient, I am sure the whole concept of opaque to one wavelength and transparent to another has to be mind-boggling to a lot of people.
If folks can understand why a hole in the ozone layer is bad for our skin, they just might be able to get the idea. The science of the Glowforge is going to seduce so many folks to a deeper familiarity with optics than Blu-Ray DVD ever could because it’s on a whole different scale. All the discussion on the various properties of different types of lasers and interactions with materials has been so enlightening to me. Sorry for the pun.
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Thanks for that. The article was very interesting. I had been thinking that perhaps masking the disks would make the difference.
It’s actually a reasonable thought: if, for example, you put masking tape on it than the heat and force of the masking tape/soot/whatever ablating could bust through the mirrored surface and avoid much reflection.
I’d recommend playing with other materials though.