Torching wood with your Glowforge

Beyond the Manual
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I don’t have a final project to share yet, so this will be brief. I want to make something with the look of torched wood, where you use a blowtorch to burn the surface of the wood.

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Alas, I don’t have a blowtorch, and probably shouldn’t be trusted around one anyway.

Luckily, the Glowforge can torch wood! Remove the lens and you can torch the surface of some wood with the full width of your ~2mm wide unfocused laser beam. Engraving a rectangle at 1000 speed, 100 power, 35 LPI provided full coverage. This box lid I tested on, which I believe is pine, took only about 2 minutes to engrave at such low LPI.

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There’s no depth to the “engraving”, it’s just browned the wood as if I’d used a torch.

26 Likes
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I shouldn’t be trusted with a torch…I also shouldn’t be trusted to take my lens out, since I’m pretty sure I’ll forget to put it back it. :rofl:

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Niiice! Now take a photo of a torched piece with a good grain pattern, and do two passes – one with the no lens technique, and one as a photo engraving. :slight_smile:

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Nice method share Dan, thanks!

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I love that look! Thanks for sharing.

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Awesome technique! I can’t wait to see the full project.

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Very cool. Years ago my brother made quite a few pieces of torched wood furniture. It was so beautiful.

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Cool and you would not get the sharp edges of the shape with a torch!

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