Question posted on a couple of woodworking forums but so far no clear answers.
"I saw this product on Etsy and I’d love to make something similar. The listing talks about laser engraving but that’s clearly not how this is done. Even if I set the laser to engrave in negative (burn everything but the design) it would burn much darker than that. I know because I tried it. So it must be either a selective staining process, or a bleaching process post-staining, both of which seem very hard to achieve so precisely. How would one stain wood but leave such detailed areas untouched? At first I thought of sticker cutouts, but some of the writing is too small for that to be possible. Any ideas?"
Most plausible theory so far:
Wood stained, then laser engraver used with low power settings to “strip” a layer of stain, then burnt surface cleaned to leave natural wood color.
But if that’s how it’s done, what kind of laser would be used? Diode seems unlikely, I don’t think mine would do such a clean job, no matter the settings. CO2?
That’s a possible way, but I don’t think that’s how the boxes in the photo are done. I’m pretty sure that’s not naturally dark wood, but stained light wood, and the light areas don’t seem painted over but left (or stripped back) natural.
I think it’s a light colored wood with a tinted varnish rather than a stain. A tinted varnish won’t penetrate deeply like a stain. Safety wise, I’d thoroughly research whatever material you are lasering!
The wood grain shows through the “white” areas, most obviously on the “Walter” box, which suggests it’s the natural coloring.
A friend has been using a low-end fiber laser to bleach the dye in black PETG to make white labels / annotations / legends on 3D-printed instrument cases, without affecting the surface finish.
So perhaps the wood is stained dark, “engraved” to bleach the color, then finished with a clear coat.
His cases are smaller than those boxes, but I don’t have any details about his setup.
The box are first covered by transparent varnish then with dye.
So dye don’t soak in to wood fibers. Laser engraving remove dye and you see natural wood.
Interesting. Have you done anything like that and what type of varnish / dye would you recommend to achieve that affect? Could a diode laser do it, or is it strictly a CO2 job?
Buy some wood, use the @woodletart method, and see what happens. There is going to be a fine line (translation: critical settings) to be able to remove the stain without burning the lasered part. Yes, I would try it with my diode lasers.
A bit old topic, but it became interesting to me too. Are you sure it is engraved? Isn’t it possible to achieve it by taking a light-colored wood, cutting out the design on the cricut and sticking it, then coloring the uncovered part? Also in the pictures it seems to me that it is not engraved but photoshopped.
I suppose it’s possible but incredibly fiddly with the small lettering, I certainly wouldn’t fancy having a go at that method myself. I did some testing of staining first, burning off the layer of stain with the laser and removing the soot with vinegar. I had some limited success but not good enough to make a product out of it so I abandoned it, but I think spending enough time playing with the settings would eventually achieve a good result.
But yes those photos are probably photoshopped. I looked at the buyers photos on that seller’s Etsy page and they don’t look nearly as good.
