I learned the hard way. I’ve ordered my share of wood online, and I’ve received my share of warped crap in those orders.
Just in my little world, the guys that I know who have their own lumber mills spend all of their time working with the mill, and only one of them has any kind of online presence. He is currently traveling around the US in the airstream that he salvaged, stripped down, and rebuilt from the ground up. It has a beautiful hardwood floor now.
And for a number of reasons too, especially with woods, one of the biggest is seeing what you’ll get before you pay.
A friend sent me some stuff from laserbits to engrave on and one of them was a piece of cedar that I’m not going to be able to use because it had so many knots in it!
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Ooh, there are several animals hidden in that board, that could be brought to light. I see a salmon, a shark, or a dolphin right off the bat. Maybe that board should go to your girlfriend, and let her find the perfect design that is complimented by the irregularities.
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If I take a photo of it from above, you wanna draw them out and send me the file so I can cut/engrave it?
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sure!
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You don’t see the one-eyed, one-horned, flyin’ purple people eater? 
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not so much…
But I saw him last night on a TV show.
He was blowing it out, really knockin’ em dead,
Playin’ rock and roll music through the horn in his head.
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Now I need to know which one in Portland you’re talking about!
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If only that middle one were its complement, they would be the Mardi Gras colors! (Heading back down to NOLA soon; just getting into the spirit of the event.)
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That purple, though… 
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Very curious how the engraving interacts with the figure!
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Wow, some nice shading on that purple.
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yeah for real! Im gonna have to slow down the padauk and yellow heart engraves a little to see if they take any more color
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This batch colored a bit better. I’ll probably have to shoot for 125 on the padauk/yh to get an optimal coloring.
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So were you able to cut through those hardwoods? I wasn’t sure what the “didn’t cut” meant.
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I should be able to, I just made a light guesstimate last time and it fell a little short. Plenty of room to up the power/lower the speed/run additional passes. I just wrote down the cut power as a reference point, but had to make sure I wrote ‘didnt cut’ so if I see it 6 months from now ill know it wasnt enough.
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I’ve learned more about lasering in the past year than the previous 43. But can you possibly tell me what the numbers represent? Sorry if that’s a stupid question. I mean, I figure it’s some measure of speed and power, but you’ve 2 sets of numbers on most and in reverse orders and… yeah… I just don’t get it.
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