It looks like the neighborhood interest in the blue rocks (collected on various mine tailings in the Southwest) is waning, so I needed a new source to put in the little wagon in front of my Hobbit Hole. I decided to make some Kindness rocks, with various uplifting phrases engraved on them.
I got the rocks from my local Home Depot, in the form of a mesh mounted river rock tile:
The cool thing is these rocks have all been sliced nice and flat and less than 0.5” thick, so they are easy to use in the Glowforge. I did coat them with a thin layer of resin first (I used Little Windows Brilliant resin, which has no chlorine in it) to bring out the full color of the rock. It’s a pain to do the coating though, so for the next batch I might mask them and paint through the mask. Otherwise there’s not enough contrast after engraving, in some cases (depends on the individual rock).
Wonderful!
I just read a piece about a young woman who paints small rocks and leaves them scattered around where she walks.
Inspirational quotes and cute emojis.
An example was a poop emoji rock places next to a pile of horse manure. She started finding thank you notes in their place.
Welcome little bright spots in the day!
Sort of related. Here in the UK it is very common for people to leave flowers at sites say where there has been a road fatality, or HRH Prince Philips funeral.
To me and my wife we both think it is a waste of flowers, they are cut up and die. So much nicer would be painted stones that would make a lasting memorial.
We have a local church which has done this, so people can leave something to remember those who have passed because of Covid.
Not gonna lie, that part was a bit of a pain. I had to use a knife to scrape off the glue residue. I did manage to soften it a little with a heat gun. If I make another batch I might try to bake them with indirect heat on my gas grill to see it it would come off easier.
I got relatively easy and quick results with boiling water. I used heavy rubber kitchen/cleaning gloves to protect and insulate my hands, then immersed the tiles. After allowing a couple minutes for the glue to soften, I peeled the tiles off the mesh and, wiped the melted glue off with paper towels.
Each tile took a couple dips and a little rubbing but, it came off with maybe 30 seconds per tile, tops.
Not sure how consistent the type of glue used for that is, etc. but, might be worth a try.
Very well done! I don’t think I’d go through the trouble of adding resin, but masking and painting sounds very doable. Or I wonder if spray lacquer would also work like it does on slate?
My town was named one of the worst cities in the US (ya for me! ) and in response, a group here started “Stockton Rocks” which puts pained rocks all around town for people to find and share. It is/was such a cool, uplifting thing. It’d be fun to add laser ones to the effort.
) and in response, a group here started “Stockton Rocks” which puts pained rocks all around town for people to find and share. It is/was such a cool, uplifting thing. It’d be fun to add laser ones to the effort.