For those who have used it, does that material come finished like the maple proofgrade? It dooesn’t specify it is like the others.
Those tokens went over big for that non-profit who had ordered 1000 tokens, and are interested in another order of 2 or 3,000 now! Since the price of maple went up by $5.00 a sheet, I’m thinking about doing them in the basswood to keep the cost down for them.
Any other differentiating characteristics between the two I should be aware of in terms of engraving? is the scorch color comparable?
Thank you!
The page says; “Each board is coated with a furniture-grade semi-gloss finish” so I’m confused as to why it isn’t listed as finished like the maple, cherry and walnut specify.
Thank you for the links! For this use, I am looking for the plywood. I really liked the fact that proofgrade removed the steps of finishing, cutting the work of completing a large order considerably.
Thanks for your help!
Basswood is much weaker than maple but as plywood, I’m not sure there is much difference as it is mostly MDF in Proofgrade. Michael’s (and I am sure others)sell very nice thin birch and basswood plywood from Revell that I have yet to find the usual plywood issues though they have wood instead of MDF and often five layers instead of three. as for finish, I would guess if you sprayed the fresh plywood with an acrylic finish and added the paper masking it would improve your cleanup time immensely.
Ocoochalso has very nice birch that would be good to pre-spray and paper @$2.00 a 12x24 sheet.
Their website is a bit weird, but with a first time discount these 1/4 inch planks are about $5 a sheet here, though I seem to remember cheaper singly in the store a few months ago but they only had a few
As it turns out, I just received my first sheets of Med. Basswood. Here’s a close-up of the surface with a piece of PG Maple on top for comparison. The surface finish is a bit more pebble-like than the others, but for the purposes of the meal tokens, I think it would be fine.
That’s a Darice product. If you have a resale license, you can set up an account with Darice. I show the price of that is $5.03/sheet (shipped), minimum of 6.
That comparison is helpful, Thanks Dennis! I think you’re right, and as @rbtdanforth said, the core is analogous so that should work.
Thank you JB, No licence - I never intended to make any money with this thing, but as it turns out, this will mean the glowforge has paid for itself!
This time it’s a bit better because I already have the file work done. Sweet to be enjoying a beer during a 3:40 minute print while my robot slaves away.
Have you considered the wood gallery? It comes in two foot sheets, so you’ll need to cut it down as I know you have a basic. But it is pre-finished (a protective layer on top of the stain) and you can order it with masking applied. It’s a little cheaper than proofgrade and I ordered just over $100 of product and wasn’t charged shipping, but they don’t seem to have a free shipping policy so maybe I was just lucky?? Geektonurse and I both found the finish on their Bordeaux to be way too fragile, but all the other colors were tough. Someone else commented that they had a piece of Bordeaux just as tough as the other colors and maybe we got a bad lot.
I know you sometimes soak your stuff in alcohol. If you’re interested, I could cut a circle in some and toss it in a bowl of an alcohol to see how it stands up.
Regarding the alcohol soak, no need. I just discovered that household ammonia wipes the residue off all but instantly, far exceeding both alcohol and acetone in cutting it. A welcome discovery faced with thousands of tokens!
Have you thought about buying wooden nickle blanks? There are different sizes and might be more cost effective. You can get some different materials. This place has blanks you can buy.
