Worked! Sort of...

 Still ongoing with the plaques, learnt a few things and also made a few mistakes.

Looking at the previous update, there was a typo on one, which was a bit frustrating. But since these are tests on scrap wood, no biggie - just sand it back and try again. Here's their current state:

The blank one at the back is the sanded one. The others I had another go at with water and rubbing to get the paper off and looked mostly ok. Then I made the mistake of trying out a "light sanding". Did the one on the left first, didn't notice some of the writing was rubbed off. Did the one on the right and with the first stroke saw lots of writing removed. Whoops!

I gave them a coat of varnish anyway, the damage can be "rustic look". Plus I wanted to see how much of the paper would still show after sealing. There was a definite white "sheen" of paper fibers prior to adding the varnish but happy to see that the writing showed through strong and clear after. Photo taken just after applying, need to assess after it's all dried out.

Lessons learned: pick a font between the two - the thicker one is too obvious when there are issues or damage to the ink, the thin one does not stand out enough from the wood grain. And spell check!

More options

 Following on from the most recent project (the laptop stand, which has now been painted blue) my awesome wife gifted me a Dremel set for Christmas. This opens up a lot of new options not only with wood, but also with glass and stone. Admittedly stone would put a lot more wear and tear on the bits and the motor, and glass always has the option of shattering... so the primary focus will be wood.

It's what the device is intended for, I have some wood on hand, and I should be able to get scraps to work on relatively cheap. Should be interesting to see what projects I can come up with to make.

Salt Etching, successful proof of concept

 Woohoo! Took a bit of time (most of that was waiting on my dry film to arrive), but I have a test of salt etching that I'm happy with. :)

I had one limited result test earlier today, my first go with the dry film. I was using a single-layer toner onto tape transfer as a mask, and the toner from my printer prints too thinly to be a decent mask. Plus the image that I was attempting to use was too ambitious for a first go:

My printer gave out reasonably sharp detail, which I was happy with, but the post-exposure results on the aluminium came out too blotchy (as in, the parts covered by the toner should have been a uniform colour, but were not). The result was that when I put it through the soda wash, the solution wasn't strong enough to remove the bits that were supposed to come off, and making it stronger took off the bits that were meant to stay.

Simple solution, get it all off and try again. For my next attempt, I made a much simpler mask with some bold text.

This gave a much cleaner result after the initial exposure. Removing the fill with the soda wash produced a very clean result.

Finally, into the salt water and electricity bath to etch the aluminium. I wasn't too sure how long to leave it in there for (should have timed it!) but I wanted it to be deep enough to be a decent etch, but shallow enough that it didn't start going sideways under the fine details (like the middle bits in the A's and the R's). I kind of winged it (and kept pulling it out to check it) and after it looked about right, it was moment of truth!

With this process, you can put it back into the salt water to keep etching if you think it needs to go deeper, but once you start taking off the resist - you'll never get another layer of resist back on there! So get it right the first time.

I'm pretty happy with how that came out! :D

The process is rather brutal on the metal, so I'm not sure how fine detail will work out, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to have a go tomorrow. I figure one more test with fine detail to see how that goes, then I might have a crack at a real task. Fingers crossed!

Plank, take one

For those who don't know, a trackable (or travel bug, usually abbreviated as TB) is a GeoCaching thing, and is essentially a game piece with a unique number (like a license plate). Normally, people use the actual metal TB they buy, but some people will copy the code onto something else and keep the original metal tag at home (to try and reduce the number of TB that go missing).

For whatever reason, I thought I'd make a little Plank model. No idea why, I never really watched the Ed, Edd and Eddy show, maybe saw parts of episodes when I was younger and channel surfing.

Below is my first attempt. It doesn't really show it in the photo, but the varnish I used came out waaaayy darker than I wanted it to. Plus the ink that I used for the eyes and mouth ran into the grain, giving it a slightly creepy look. Good for making a Plank / Joker crossover, but not the look I was after.

So back to the drawing board, I'll have one more crack at it.

In other news, I picked up some Hot Wheels cars with the intention of maybe doing some customization on them or using them as TB, but cars tend to go missing pretty quick and I don't have all the tools needed to properly convert them.

First setback

Grrr... can't get my (old) graphics tablet to work with my (ancient) laptop. Most frustratement.

Next stage is trying to use a phone app. I've got some basic results to use for my first proof of concept, but although I like the stylistic (albeit oversimplistic) look... I'm not happy with the result or workflow.

I may end up just doing it the dead tree and scan way, which I was trying to avoid. Need to get the first one done.

Drawings

My beautiful, awesome wife bought me some drawing supplies for our 4th anniversary. <3

I'm still very time poor, but it is nice to have some good quality pencils and blank paper to draw on. Better than working around lined paper.

And variety! I'd previously just used whatever pencils I had on hand, usually a budget bargain hard writing pencil. Having a suite of different pencils gives a lot more options.

Now the hard part - making the time to use them!