Making Printing Blocks From Firewood
by
Clint
2 Materials
$10
2 Hours
Medium
I really wanted to try my hand at making some printing blocks just because I love the result they give and I knew it would be a bit of a challenge. Naturally the first design I tried out was my logo and after that I attempted to make a symbol from Game of Thrones. Check out the video if you'd like to see close ups of how the details came through.
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I started off by finding some suitable wood, I read online that Maple can be used for printing blocks as its hard wearing and so you can carve intricate details into it. I had some Maple firewood that I bought from a sawmill a few years ago and so planed it down flat and got ready to put my logo onto it.
Maply planed down and ready
I planed a small section of the Maple flat and printed out my logo to the size that would fit. I then got a pencil and coloured in all the parts of the logo that I wanted to transfer onto the wood.
Colouring in the logo
Once I coloured all the logo in with pencil I then flipped it upside down and placed it carefully onto the piece of wood, making sure not to move it once I placed it.
Grabbing a carpenters pencil I scribbled all over the back of the piece of paper with a fair bit of pressure but not so much that I ripped the paper. I had to make sure to keep the piece of paper in the same place the whole time so the transfer was nice and crisp.
Logo transferred
After a little bit of pencilling, the logo transferred onto the wood. Using a fine tipped pencil I then drew around the outline of the logo. There are of course other ways to transfer an image onto wood but I felt like this is one of the more low tech and therefore less expensive and more accessible ways of doing it.
Carving the logo
I wanted the "Timber" part of my logo to protrude from the wood and the "Anew" part to be a kind of negative image. Using a carving knife and a set of small and inexpensive carving chisels I slowly cut the wood away bit by bit. Carving can be quite daunting but as long as you take your time I think anyone can do it. You just need patience!
The logo just carved on its own looks kinda cool but the object of this is to make a printing block. I placed some ink onto it and tried a print, it didn't work very well and seemed to me that the surface of the block wasn't completely flat. To remedy this I got some sandpaper and placed it onto a known flat surface, I then moved the block over it slowly until all of it was sanded. That way I knew that the surface was completely flat.
When I tried it again it worked much better! Its not perfect and I think I could improve on it but I'm pretty pleased with it. It gives that interesting distressed look.
Baratheon Sigil from Game of Thrones
I used the same technique to transfer the image of the Baratheon sigil onto the next piece of wood. I didn't have any more maple the right size so this time I used what I've been told is either oak or beech.
For this block I wanted to try something different, so I made the whole logo the negative space on the block. The background would take all the ink.
All in all I was quite pleased with these and I think in the future I could make a better job of them. To get the game of thrones block to print so dark I used a sponge to put a little bit of paint onto the surface. I then placed the block down onto the paper and used a clamp to add lots of pressure, this seemed to work really well. I think in the future I'll be making a printing press of some kind.
If you enjoyed that project then please share the video and also give the TImber Anew Facebook Page a like, that helps me out a lot!
Thanks a lot for checking it out, any comments, ideas and criticisms are highly welcome.
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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4 of 19 comments
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Really like this! Thank you for the tutorial.
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Outstanding!! Nicely done😊
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Thank you very much Bernice!
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