Which PG materials to use

[ritadian]

I’ve been ordering PG materials to have a decent amount of stock on hand, and I was wondering which products you use for plywood and which products you use for hardwood. I primarily create jewelry but am working on expanding to include small decorative items for the home. Also, would there ever be a case to make items for customers out of draftboard?

[eflyguy]

Besides PG materials, I use primarily Baltic Birch from my local Rockler, and Lauan ply (“underlayment”) from Lowes.

[rbtdanforth]

I would not use draftboard or the various plywoods using daftboard, but that is just me. I have seen others using it a lot. There are times when the stability of plywood makes it the better thing to use especially with large areas as there is a limit how wide the wood available is and very thin wood edge glued is difficult to say the least,

Any deep engraving can be done with some plywoods, but most will look awful so not good there. Small pieces like jewelry can be more fragile where the wood is subject to warp or splitting, So some thought is needed there. Sometimes the direction of the grain can make a big difference.

[rbtdanforth]

My favorite ply when engraving is Baltic Birch or carefully chosen oak, where “revolution” and “luan” plywoods have outer plys thinner than paper and really ugly underneath.

[gewubs]

I acrylic. It cuts so nice, and there are some very nice colours.

[reynoso]

I´ve seen beautiful work cut in veneer/MDF from @raymondking32

Feeling "meh" about the design

You could engrave the cutouts for texture. I like to add a score line near the edge of my designs, that tends to tie in whatever it is I’ve made. [IMG_20190923_202823_367] [IMG_20191015_101634_870] Here are a couple of earrings designs I’ve made where you can see the score line I mentioned.

[ritadian]

I’ve made some pieces with clear acrylic that turned out great, but ooh boy the smell LOL!

[cynd11]

I actually really like Draftboard when I want to do a bit of detail coloring. Draftboard takes colored pencils really well:

Another reason to like Draftboard

So, I like to add a little color to my projects, and in making up a batch of gift card holders (my goofy family would rather have gift cards than actual gifts–maybe they don’t like my shopping and home made things ) I engraved some designs on the tops that looked a tiny bit boring. They needed some color. It turns out that Draftboard has the perfect texture/tooth for using colored pencils, in this case Prismacolor pencils. I think they add a nice touch. [IMG_0420] I will finish of…