Thread: giraffe hiking pole

Nice work, the shape of the face looks pretty good and I do like the use of your Burning pen on this one. I just think your glass eye is too small and the eye lid needs to be more pronounced over the top of the eye ball. If you google a real giraffe image you'll get my drift.

Nice ,were you aware that wood burning fades quite dramatically over the years? I used to use it in my sticks years ago but had to modify my technique after seeing some of my work 10-15 years later. The blacks fade to virtually nothing if exposed to light when put in at this kind of depth ! In the end I stopped using the technique & reserved it for feather texture only. I was both amazed & disappointed to see the results , I had thought the black carbon of the burnt wood would have been permanent.

The carbonized wood is very badly fractured, like the charcoal from any fire.
Since the structural integrity of the wood fiber is gone, might be a suggestion to "glue it down" with something like a satin Varathane. Otherwise, simple physical fricton should wear it away (as I scrape the burnt surface off my toast.)

I realise that the eyes where small and it does need eyelids but it was what the guy wanted and wouldnt wait for larger eyes to come ,The only way i could have made eyelids for it was to just carve the eyes,must admit it may have looked better
As for the wood burning marks fading i didnt know that i just thought it was carbon and giving it a thin solutions of varnish then giving it about 3 more coats it would protect the finish and seal evrything

RV's comments have made me think about what was happening. Although I would seal the pyro-graphed lines , I would first have sanded the surface of the wood to remove the undesirable smokey " halo" effect around some lines to clean it up & increase the contrast between the wood colour & the dark lines. Then I would give it a good brush off to get rid of the sanding dust BUT that brush off was in fact removing a large amount of the dark carbon before it was sealed also ! -Derrr !
In retrospect it would have been better if I had - 1. sealed the lines first & let it set, then 2. sanded the woods' surface & only then 3. put on the final finish. Thus preserving a lot more of the dark carbon in the lines.
Whilst I'm sure that revised work schedule would have helped a load , I would still definitely say though ,that a shallow , lightish brown in colour line will not last the test of time. Shallow wood burning may look much more subtle & artistic when first done but fades out to a broken & weak disappearing line on exposure to light . I don't envy your conundrum ,subtle & more appealing but unstable! or grosser & less attractive but it'll last. The lightness of the burning on the giraffes head does look as if it will be susceptible to this unfortunate fate. Sorry to be be bearer of bad news, UV. varnish might help a bit ?

Hi Cobalt, If yer customer is happy with the smaller eyes I guess that's all that matters.
Mike, I'm really surprised about the carbon fade, you learn something everyday, I thought with a finish over it, it would last & last.

I also thought it would last any one any suggestions how to make it last?

I think before you can really discuss how to make the burned areas last, one needs to establish what it is that's making them fade. So far I'm hearing two theories, the first that its a mechanical wear and the second is the effects of UV. In both cases a coat or 3 of a good UV resistant varnish should do the trick?

Personally I use this technique a lot, (the burning not the varnish) and while I don't have sticks 10 years + old to compare, the ones I do have (4 to 5 years) are travelling fine so far. One has to ask how long a stick should continue to look pristine, especially if its used for the purpose it was intended ie: hiking and walking as opposed to a show piece hanging over the mantle.

If its a real issue then I guess the only answer is paint, but even that fades with time.

FYI, if you want to create eyelids for artificial eyes, there are only two ways I'm aware of... either use some sort of putty or 'bodge' to shape eyelids after the eye is set. This will then necessitate painting your critter as the 'bodge' almost never matches the surrounding wood. Or you can cut the eye sockets in the shape of the relaxed eye fissure and then carve or grind the eye ball to fit this socket shape. Personally my preference is for the latter method but it means plastic eyes as I don't have the facilities to grind glass.

Originally Posted by Whittling

I think before you can really discuss how to make the burned areas last, one needs to establish what it is that's making them fade. So far I'm hearing two theories, the first that its a mechanical wear and the second is the effects of UV. In both cases a coat or 3 of a good UV resistant varnish should do the trick?

Personally I use this technique a lot, (the burning not the varnish) and while I don't have sticks 10 years + old to compare, the ones I do have (4 to 5 years) are travelling fine so far. One has to ask how long a stick should continue to look pristine, especially if its used for the purpose it was intended ie: hiking and walking as opposed to a show piece hanging over the mantle.

If its a real issue then I guess the only answer is paint, but even that fades with time.

FYI, if you want to create eyelids for artificial eyes, there are only two ways I'm aware of... either use some sort of putty or 'bodge' to shape eyelids after the eye is set. This will then necessitate painting your critter as the 'bodge' almost never matches the surrounding wood. Or you can cut the eye sockets in the shape of the relaxed eye fissure and then carve or grind the eye ball to fit this socket shape. Personally my preference is for the latter method but it means plastic eyes as I don't have the facilities to grind glass.

totally agree with you ,you can use epoxy resin for the eye lids lots of decoy carvers do,but wild fowl look fine without it its just dosnt seem to work so well on animals.
i have used epoxy on the rhino i just carved and painted i wasnt going to paint it but had to in the end to cover the epoxy up.
I have also used gold leaf on hiking poles it works well and i think the wear it has improved the overall look as i gave it a red undercoat befor i applied it and it does show now its been used.It was the 1st stick i made a bit crude perhaps but it has been used
regularly..but a hiking pole ishould be used and wear on them oftern improves the look of them s

p&j hiking (43).JPG

Here are my experiences with wood burning , interpret them as you will, I too find it counter intuitive that carbon (burnt wood) can fade & relatively quickly too. Yet there are charcoal drawings from the renaissance surviving! Those prehistoric caves in France have pictures draw with burned stick ends & other pigments that are dated to 32,000 C ! Still they haven't been exposed to the sun.

I had a birch plywood tray with deep wood burning on it from Romania , it had a VERY thick coat of varnish on it, it lay around for 30 years in poor light - it did not fade.

My father burned his house number into a piece of wood crudely a poker heated in the fire , it was easily 1/4" deep then he dipped it in marine varnish ( with UV. filter) it was very thick indeed! No sanding , brushing or rubbing all the charred wood was left intact. This was screwed to the gate in the full sun , within in 5 years you couldn't red the number, the varnish was relatively sound !

20 odd years ago I used to sell pyrographed clocks burning into sycamore, they were very finely drawn & included both deep lines & light shading which involved lightly searing the surface of the wood for subtle shading, they were then given a thin coat of acrylic varnish. A clock that I had on my mantle-piece in a well sun lit room ( but not direct sun) faded, the very light shading completely vanished without trace within a year ! Less strong lines showed signs of serious fading after 5 years , the deeply burned lines survive to this day but are much more brown than the original fresh black.

A wall clock hung in a dark corner of a dingy dark room has fared the best but the lightest shading burning has disappeared.

As soon as I noticed this fading I investigated varnishes with UV. filters but was told by all four of the the major manufacturers that 3 thick coats (of an already very thick varnish ) minimum was required to offer even a maximum of 20% filtering in ideal conditions .I stopped making clocks as they were upmarket & expensive, I don't want to let anybody down.

Of course we are not talking about pure charcoal which is always made in oxygenless conditions & out of certain wood species . have look at this http://www.vias.org/church_paintchem...paint_107.html maybe our pure carbon isn't so pure ? It looks highly likely the fading is a result in fact of chemical instability.So given that the carbon resulting from pyrography is an impure mixture of various wood tars ,oxidized materials & carbon which will be highly acidic , corrosive & have a strong destabilizing effect on the pure black carbon pigment . Add that to the undoubted fading affects of sunlight , ie. destabilized pigment soup + the bleaching effect of the sun = that I fear there is no practical way to make the burnt marks stable & permanent !