Laser cutting masonite

Community Support
21

Using hardeners is a good point to make. Bookmarking for further investigation.

22

I have used this stuff on rotten wood and plain old paper.
http://www.jamestowndistributors.com/userportal/show_product.do?pid=2093&familyName=Boatlife+GIT-Rot&history=&engine=adwords!6456&keyword=git+rot&match_type=

It is amazing, but also expensive. I know there are cheaper one part products (minwax makes one) but I have never tried them.

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23

I’ve used the one-part hardeners, and they sorta work. But they have to be really thin to soak in, so any seriously soft/rotten wood (like the bottoms of our doorframes will soak up pints of the stuff. Superglue probably fine for this application.

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24

Looking at
[this stuff] https://www.lowes.com/pd/47-75-in-x-7-98-ft-Smooth-Brown-Hardboard-Wall-Panel/3014304)
Says formaldehyde free.

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25

I used the Lowe’s hardboard on a couple of laser-cutter projects at TechShop (RIP!). It’s super-cheap, making it terrific drafting material. The surface is really smooth, and the mottled appearance has some appeal, so it might even be suitable for certain finished applications.

The downsides:

– The back of the panel is rough, about like burlap. After all, this stuff is meant to be glued to walls, and the roughness helps the glue grip. (If a product description says “smooth on both sides”, DON’T BELIEVE IT! Or, at least, don’t expect both sides to be finished-quality smooth.) I tried making a few double-sided things by gluing pieces back-to-back, but the roughness made for a terribly-unsubtle middle “seam”. Sanding might’ve helped (that would’ve been more trouble than my experiment was worth), but I’m not sure how well hardboard holds up to that.

– The color is pretty dark, which makes engraved elements a bit hard to see. (I’ll note that’s there’s also white hardboard.)

– You need someone to cut those 4’x8’ panels into manageable size. My Lowe’s charges to do more than about two cuts; moreover, their giant panel cutter is hardly a precision instrument, so the end results tend to be far from uniform or square. (You can buy small-size hardboard panels at art stores —painters use them as canvases— but the price goes up.)

26

I use them for quick knock together stuff - it’s about $8 for a 4x8 sheet at my Home Depot and they have the same 2 cuts for free but if it’s not busy they’ll rip it down further and they don’t charge me for it. Depending on the car I have with me I usually get it down to 2x2 square and then break it down smaller at home. I’ve used it for street art stencils in longer panels using the pass through. It’s easy to cut and the shiny side is easy clean up (relatively speaking) for paint overspray.

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