A few years ago I harvested some stones from a creek-bed while out dirt biking, thinking I would engrave on them. Turns out they didn’t laser well at all, and I put them aside.
About six months ago I found them, sprayed them matte black with some krylon, and put them aside to dry.
Yesterday I found them again.
I don’t live in a big city, this is a glorified farm town. There are already plenty of landscaping rocks, xeriscaping rocks, river-rock features, and regular ole’ “just settin’ on the ground” rocks. I’m not even remotely worried about one of these being the catalyst for a vandalistic throw.
The main “littering” complaint stems from people putting them off of trails in protected lands, like national/state parks. There are people who go out looking for these, much like geocaching. So that is more than the normal amount of footprints off of the regulated trails. I have seen quite a bit of damage in some sensitive places. My advisor at UNLV was doing work studying cryptogamic soils and a bunch of college frat brats decided to have a kegger at the site and destroyed hundreds of years worth of soil creation. I, personally, don’t see these as a big problem, but I can understand how site owners might object.
I found that when engraving dark rocks that ended up with zero contrast, I was able to get the engraving to show up by rubbing a bit of gold acrylic paint in the engraved area and wiping it off the surrounding bit.
There’s a group in my area (Kitsap Rocks) that paints rocks and leaves them around the area in gardens and such with the intent of making folks smile… found one in my yard a few years ago & a neighbor told me the idea is to then “rehome” it…
I found a rock a few years ago that someone pained the word “Faith”on. It was at a dark time in my life and I still have that rock…out on display. Brings me a sense of peace every time I see it. I absolutely love your project!!!
Great idea ! Hi we have spoken before abs I’m not one to step out of the box , but .
Was wondering can I pre paint on the wood I choose then mask and engrave it cut ?
Using acrylic paint either from Home Depot or Michael’s .
And maybe one day I can use your idea … once I get really comfortable…
thank you
Donna
Oh Yeah! You can get a wider range of texture/color results.
Go ahead and make “mistakes”, it’s all learning. You will probably come up with an interesting effect we would never have otherwise seen. Some of my best work has not come out as planned, thank goodnes…it came out better.