Wood-burning art or pyrography is one of the fascinating arts to create beautiful designs on wood surfaces. Pyrography has various techniques, the most common of which is the use of a special wood-burning tool, a wood-burning pen. But there is another way, which is to use a magnifying glass. The question is, what is the best magnifying glass for wood burning? Is there a difference between what magnifying glass we use? What magnifying glass works best for this purpose? In this article, we will answer this question.
What is Wood Burning Art?
Burning wood without igniting can be an interesting idea to create different designs on wood. In this method, the artist usually creates different designs with a very hot metal on the wood. Just like a pencil artist drawing with a pencil on paper.
Wood Burning Tool
The tool used for this purpose is called a wood-burning pen. See Essential Tools for Pyrography Art | How to Use Pyrography Tools for more information.
Wood Burning with a Magnifying Glass
Creativity is what makes people unique. The mind of the creative artist is always open to experiencing new things. So it is no surprise that some artists have replaced a wood-burning pen with a magnifying glass! Creative use of woodworking tools is one of the hallmarks of artistic woodworking.
As a child, you probably burned paper with a magnifying glass and sunlight. Why not use this idea for pyrography? Not bad to know some artists have done this.
How the process is done is almost simple. On a sunny day raise your magnifying glass up a little from the wood surface and find the focal point. You steer the magnifying glass in the direction of your design, the rest is done by the sun.
See Wood Burning With a Magnifying Glass for more information.
Best Magnifying Glass For Wood Burning
There are different types of lenses that you can see in the figure below.
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This technique is known with some different names such as Lichtenberg wood burning, fractal wood burning, and electricity wood art.
This technique should not be confused with wood burning art or pyrography. The art of pyrography on wood is the art of creating motifs and designs by burning with hot metal tools on objects such as wooden surfaces.
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As you can see there are different types of lenses based on the curvature of the two optical surfaces. Biconvex lenses are used in the manufacture of magnifying glasses. The magnifying glass can collect parallel rays at a point called the focal point. Therefore, by holding the magnifying glass in front of the sun, the heat and light of the rays are concentrated at the focal point of the magnifying glass, and if flammable material is located at that point, it can easily catch fire.
There are two points to choose a suitable lens for burning wood: lens diameter and lens thickness.
Lens Thickness and Focal Length
The thicker the lens, the longer the focal length. Therefore, this factor will not affect the amount of heat produced by the magnifying glass.
Note that if your magnifying glass lens is too thin, the focal length is large and you may not be able to focus easily, and it may be a little difficult to hold the magnifying glass to burn wood.
Lens Diameter and Energy Density
The focal point of the lens is where the parallel beams gather. When we put a lens from sunlight, it actually collects all the energy of sunlight that passes through the diameter of the lens at one point, increasing the energy density, or energy per unit area.
The more energy is concentrated by the lens, the higher the energy density and causes more burning. So the bigger the diameter of your magnifying glass, the better.
The Lighter The Better
Although the weight of the magnifying glass may not be so important at first glance, try to choose a magnifying glass that is lighter. Because your hand will be less tired during the wood-burning process. Burning wood with a magnifying glass can take a long time, and even 50g weights less is very different in a long time.
Conclusion
The best magnifying glass for wood burning are magnifying glasses that have a large lens diameter and more light passes through the opening. They will be much faster. Also, the focal length of the magnifying glass should not be too low or too high (about 20 cm is fine) and preferably light.
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