Mother Son Portrait: Laser Engraved Pine

This Mother Son Portrait is permanently engraved onto a piece of live edge Pine that was cut to size at CNCROi.com.

This is a picture I took of Simon and his mom while they were sleeping, the pose was perfect and in black and white to begin with, so it’s really the perfect photo for this given application.

The Pine actually comes from a piece of live edge wood we had in the shop, I just cut up the sides and the rough dimensions so that the laser could engrave the Mother Son Portrait I took onto the wood.

Even pets have had the honor to be engraved onto Pine at CNCROi.com!

I’ve done a ton of custom pyrography using CNCROi.com‘s CNC laser in the past, it’s a fantastic process, especially on Pine because it’s so easy to work with and to create a little depth on.

The goal with this Mother Son Portrait wasn’t to create massive depth like I can do with my CNC router for carving into the wood, it’s more of a subtle darkening of the wood so you can still easily follow the wood grain though the image.

What type of imagery works best with burning images into wood? The more contrast there is, the better the result and ideally, black and white vectors come out the best.

Here’s Simon before he joined the rest of us in the world, he’s changed quite a bit over the past year.

The purpose of going multiple passes onto this piece of Pine to create the Mother Son Portrait rather than just one pass is that I find better contrast and results are created in this method, one solid pass can lead to a lot of burning where you don’t want it while light multiple passes tends to create a more subtle result with more even pyrographic results.

The bright light you see in these photos is the instant vaporization of the Pine surface once it’s hit by our CO2 laser, it’s a mix of small fires and the combustion of that being burned as well.

Wedding photos are especially popular with custom pyrography, again, remember to get as high a contrast an image as possible.

When it comes to your design options with CNCROi.com, they are endless, any type of photo as long as it has enough contrast between the various elements works great, especially images that don’t have a lot of color in them.

Keep in mind there is a layer of dust and smoke building-up on the surface of this Mother Son Portrait during production, this is why sanding is crucial to get the details out after production.

After the first pass, you can see the darkening of the wood and if you look closely, especially along the top of the image below, you can also see the smoke that deposited onto the surface of the Mother Son Portrait.

CNCROi.com will now perform several more passes in order to create some charcoal to greatly darken the wood on this Mother Son Portrait.

The cottage I have spent a lot of time at through the years always comes out great when it comes to laser engraving it.

Unlike the carving CNCROi.com does using our CNC router, the CNC laser produces a different results that’s heavily influenced by the grain of the wood we are doing the pyrography onto.

Where the wood is denser, there is less depth created where you typically have the “tree rings” with the space inbetween achieving more depth, remember the laser is using the same power throughout, it’s the densities of the wood that are influencing the depth that is created.

While with our CNC router, the density of the wood makes no difference, our router just plows through it all creating a unified depth.

I had some fun with old pallets one day using the worn out and dented Pine to make a really neat world map.

You have to remember that what you are seeing on this piece of Pine is not accomplished using ink or dyes, it’s just charcoal production, so there is nothing exotic added to the wood or removed, just a change in the state of the Pine itself.

Below is the finished Mother Son Portrait right off the machine, CNC laser pyrography always looks darker and more blurry on the machine than the final piece is intended because of all the smoke build-up on the surface which is easily sanded at CNCROi.com.

After a light sanding, again, remember that the laser goes less deep on areas of higher density (grain), you can see the image come-out far more clearly.

A layer of lacquer is added to the surface in order to increase the contrast and protect the wood from the environment, this Mother Son Portrait will be done once dry.

Need custom photography etched onto steel or engraved into wood? Contact CNCROi.com right now!