[mikey21]

I was wondering if anyone could help me out? I'm looking to have a picture of myself and my daughter burned onto the top of a jeweryl box. The wood is a 4" x 7" oval inlay of maple. Someone told me that maple is not a very good wood to burn on, due to it being so hard. If burning is not a good option, I'ed like to have the portrait carved into it, which I'm also having trouble locating someone who could do this for me. Thanks for the help.
Mike

[brian bailey]

I didn't have any problems burning maple.

Here are a couple of pictures of our dog that I burned on curly hard maple.

bai meisha ao.jpg

bai meisha co.jpg

I'm not good enough to do a commission for you, but there are many on this board that are.

If no one offers you could also look into having your portrait laser engraved on your jewelry box. Just a thought.

[Pyrographer]

Originally Posted by mikey21

I was wondering if anyone could help me out? I'm looking to have a picture of myself and my daughter burned onto the top of a jeweryl box. The wood is a 4" x 7" oval inlay of maple. Someone told me that maple is not a very good wood to burn on, due to it being so hard. If burning is not a good option, I'ed like to have the portrait carved into it, which I'm also having trouble locating someone who could do this for me. Thanks for the help.
Mike

Hi Mike,

maple is actually not hard to burn on at all but it is harder than basswood. For a skilled burner it should pose no problems at all. Working on the small surface of a box top will be the challenge, especially such a small size for a portrait of two people.

I do a lot of portraits (both human and animals) myself but unfortunately I have a project I'm currently working on and a portrait commission thats coming up.

I would suggest that perhaps you post your request on http://www.woodburner.com. There are a lot of very good woodburners there and some of them do portraits. You can also request membership in my yahoo group (link below my signature - Pyrographic Art) to make a request to other pyrographers in our group. When posting your request to woodburner just mention that I referred you and if you decide to join my group to post it just mention in your request for membership that you are the person wanting the portrait so I will just go ahead and approve the membership. You can leave the groups any time after you have found someone to do your portrait and I know that you will find someone between both of those groups. There are over 300 members in my group and a lot of active members on the other group and since both groups are strictly for woodburners, you have a good arena to post your request.

I cannot recommend anyone of the members on either site but I do suggest that you get samples of their human portraits before agreeing to have someone do your portraits. Human portraits are much different than doing animal portraits so be sure to see examples of their human portraits. There are some very talented woodburners in both groups who have done some outstanding portraits so I'm sure you can find someone between those two groups.

Wish I could help, doing portraits is one of my favorite things.

Nedra