Fall 2003 
Volume 1,
Issue9
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Projects-AN EASY CLOCK, and PAPER MACHE BOXES
 Inside this Issue:
CLICK on a topic below to go to that page

PROJECT 1, EASY CLOCK

We were very fortunate to have had readers submit tutorials here. If anyone has a tutorial or documented burn to include here, please email me at: newsletter@southwestwoodcrafts.com

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Editorial Overview 1
Smoke Rings 1
Free Projects 2
Featured Wood 3
Beginners Corner 4
Tips and Hints 4
Free Patterns 5
Free Stuff 5
Potpourri 5
Recipes 6
Sites to See 7
Feedback To Us 7
Contact Us 7
Back to Southwestwoodcrafts.com  
 

You can make a nice desk clock from those 4x4 inch squares that are used for the quilt squares and other small burns. You can woodburn a simple silhouette image as is done here or do something more detailed. The clocks I use are called "fit ups" and are battery operated small clocks that only require a hole to mount them. No messing around with hands and hardware. You can also find thermometers and humidity gauges in the same size. They make excellent gifts.

 
The first step is to select a piece of wood. I've used 4x4x1/4 inch thick basswood. Sand it as smooth as you would do with any woodburning. I like to finish mine off with 1500 grit. Select the area you want the clock to be located and either drill a small pilot hole or make a deep hole with an awl. The bit that drills into the wood is rather large..some are 1/4 inches in diameter. So make sure there is a good pilot hole for the bit to follow or else the bit will "walk" over the surface...essentially ruining it. If so, flip it over and try again.

Hole Saw

Side view of the hole saw bit

 

Hole saw bit

End view of the hole saw bit
Clock 1
Clock 3
Clock 2
A nice clean round hole Insert the clock "fit up" to make sure the fit is OK This is a view from the back.
Clock 4 Clock 6 Clock 7
Attach tracing paper as you would do for any woodburning pattern transfer. Secure the tracing paper with masking tape.
Tape the pattern over the transfer paper and trace it as done with any other woodburning pattern Here the pattern is shown transferred.
Clock 8 Clock 9  
Here is the burned silhouette and clock.
A torch was used to burn the edges to "frame" the burning. A small hangar can be attached to the back for a wall hanging, or a desktop slanted back can be used to make it a stand alone desk clock.
PROJECT 2
PAPER MACHE BOXES, by Cheryl
Several issues ago I wrote an article about my experiences burning on watercolor paper. (Click here to go to that article.) Since then, I prepared for a local craft fair and decided to do most of the work for the fair on paper mache boxes. So now that I have worked with both watercolor paper and paper mache, Bill asked me to write a follow-up article about burning paper mache boxes.

First, even though I soaked the watercolor paper for 10 minutes (and then let it dry) before burning, and did experiments finding this to be necessary, I did not soak the paper mache boxes. I did not soak them for two reasons: one, because they are a composite, which I feared would dissolve in water; and two, their surfaces were already satiny smooth. The minute bumps and ridges found in watercolor paper that are accentuated by burning and somewhat relieved by the soaking process are not found on paper mache boxes, although sometimes you will encounter air bubbles. So with no prep to the box whatsoever, I just transferred the patterns directly onto the box.

The majority of the patterns I chose to use were of a simple Christmas motif, as this fair was held at a Methodist Church and was advertised as "Avoid the mall, Do your Christmas shopping here." A few of the patterns were iron on embroidery transfers (I found out that you have to have some support under the top of the box for the pattern to transfer evenly), some were free clip art images downloaded from the internet, and about a fourth of them were of my own design. I used several different sized boxes: 4"x4" square, 7"X7" square, 4" round, 8" round, and 8.5" heart.

Here are the two patterns that I selected for this article:
Pattern 1 Pattern 2
And here are the patterns transferred to the boxes:
Transfer 1 Transfer 2
As with the watercolor paper, I needed to use a hotter temperature than I normally use to burn basswood. The Walnut Hollow burner couldn't really get hot enough to achieve a nice burn, so I used my Dremel soldering iron. The Walnut Hollow screw-in tips fit perfectly into the Dremel iron and the Dremel tool gets much hotter -- 1050 degrees F. So using the Dremel tool, I burned the outlines of the images onto the boxes.
Burn 1 Burn 2
Still using the Dremel iron, I added the darker shading to the images. This can be seen on the darker ornaments on the Christmas tree and inside the bells and ribbon on the round box.
Final box 1 Final box 2
However, I switched to the Walnut Hollow tool to do the more delicate lighter shading seen in the last set of photos pictured here. The lighter shading is on the lighter ornaments on the Christmas tree, the gift box ribbon and the tree skirt in the tree picture; in the picture of the bells, the shading I used the Walnut Hollow tool for was the lighter part of the bells, the lighter part of the ribbon and the lighter part of the cone. It almost added a burnishing effect in that instance.

I chose not to add color to most of these boxes because I didn't want to spend more than 1 to 1.5 hours on each box and I had 26 to do. Of course, some of the patterns I chose were very simple and only took 20 - 30 minutes, but the average was about 1 hour each. These two boxes took the upper end of how long I was willing to spend, about 1.5 hours each.
Cheryl's Woodburnings