Had a lot of acorns this year, some of good size which go me thinking, ‘Can these things be layered on the forge?’ Yes, yes they can.
Created a simple ‘2019’ label in a PDF program and then loaded that into the 'forge. The acorn I stabilized between 2 magnets to hold it in place. A jig would be good for great number of these, but I wanted to just test this. I used medium walnut for the settings to try things, and the set focus for the 'forge to calculate height at curve. After loading the PDF, was able to engrave this in 30 seconds.
Why do this? well, these could be an easy way to label the acorn crop for future planting (since you are just burning the outer shell), can make nice messages for friends and family “I(heart)U”, or maybe make year specific xmas tree ornaments. You could also show them to your crazy neighbor saying the squirrels have a message.
I’ve gotten quite adept at identifying the odor of toasting acorns. Little bastard squirrels found the Monza exhaust on my 74 Datsun 260Z a perfect place for winter storage. First time it happened, drove around for a week smelling something burning before I figured it out (I changed the exhaust to something a little harder to crawl in to). And in the fall when the weather starts getting cold, they “overnight” on the warm turbo in my Evo X. So when I drive the car the next day I get a really strong odor of first toasting, then burning acorns as the turbo heats up and the smoke wafts in from under the hood.
With proper placement (sides and front only) the fan doesn’t pass over the magnets and all is well. I still use unshielded magnets regularly, just not in the back or center.
Used the “set focus” option of the machine and clicked on the image of the acorn so the machine would set the focus automatically instead of me trying to calculate it. I had assumed the machine would make any adjustments to the minor curve of the acorn.
