I got a cheap laser engraver, and have been enjoying lasering all kinds of things.
I occasionally do handyman work along with other physical products. If you'd like to commission a custom build, I can help you with that.
A crazy custom bookshelf that I made for our house.
A second custom bookshelf that I made for our house a few years later. Much less crazy than the first one.
Celtic Blade Engraving. One of my sons wanted some decoration on his sword so I made this! You can download the Celtic Knot Blender File and play with the design yourself.
Garcia First Communion Wood Rounds. The overall design is based on a sketch by my wife, and the decoration is a mixture of several Midjourney designs.
First Communion Laser Engraving Detail. It's remarkable how detailed the laser can be. Looking at the overall composition though, the grapes and wheat would work better if they were scaled up and less dense.
Mothers Day Wood Rounds
Mothers Day Blessed Mother. The design was traced from an image my wife found. The variable line weight required an update to my NC Code Blender Exporter to support variable power settings. It went really surprisingly well! One might even say, miraculously well!
The Canopy Bed canopy arch things were always falling down, so I made these braces to keep them up. Cut on the table saw, and then laser engraved perhaps a bit too much.
My parents brought back this Celtic Knot rubbing from England. I woodburned the corners of the frame by hand, and then much later did the middle bits with the CNC laser. Honestly, I like the corners better, but it's nice having it fully embellished, and the overly thin corners are balanced (perhaps?) by the overly thick middles.
Chair Back Engraving
Chair Back Engraving With Stain
Chair Back Engraving Finished Chairs
Choir Cart Plaque
Choir Cart Youth Plaque
Which switch operates the Garbage Disposal? One need never wonder with this custom Switch Plate.
Grape Leaf Laser Engraving On Shelf
A "How To Not Get Fired" sign based on my Dad's recurring saying.
The music director at our church taped up some printed paper signs, so I made this replacement. An improvement? I think so.
Colored with sharpie markers and "FineTec pearlescent" watercolor paint. Music Ministers Only Please. The design is based on the architecture of the choir loft.
Ancestor Saints Totems. These are engraved with images of all the ancestral saints I could find, along with the family tree reaching back to them.
Unlike almost everything else in this gallery, these were wood burned by hand before I had a laser engraver.
A wood Katana laser engraved to look like a demon slayer sword from some Anime that the kids are watching these days.
Some cabinet laser engraving I did at the Meadow House designed with a Spiral Blender Script exported using a bit of Python code to export G-Code.
I was going for the circuits look. Seems like I got pretty close. Made for my home-assembled computer.
Knife Block. I came up with this design to decorate a friend's wedding gift, but my wife talked me out of going through with it. Too busy or something. She couldn't keep me from engraving our own knife block though!
Instead of the elaborate image above, this is the Knife Block Engraving we went with for the Wedding gifts. The knives are also engraved, though the effect is almost unnoticable.
Laser engraved wood rounds for the local life center luncheon.
My wife got these crosses for the kids homeschool co-op. The size took a few tries to get right, but that just means there are a few extras to experiment with painting!
Font Examples. There are tons of fonts to choose from, but these are my favorites. In no particular order:
Harrington, Colonna MT, Bauhaus 93, Algerian, Copperplate Gothic Bold, Edwardian Script ITC, Niagara Engraved, Imprint MT Shadow, Castellar, Parchment, Old English Text MT
My wife got a bunch of fruit trees, and she wanted to be able to tell them apart in a few years, so I made these signs for her.
There's a video about this mallet here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLbTPmDPqZE
I mounted the head at an angle to engrave the sides and bottom all at the same time. Worked pretty well!
Prayer Plaque. I really like how the bi-directional text worked out.
Three small wooden swords with name engraving.
Table Legs. If you look very close, you can see that the engraving in the stained areas are unique to each leg. No two are the same! Made for the computer table.
Threadbender Logo coat pegs
Small Wood Rounds laser engraved with the Threadbender Logo
Towel Hanger Decoration. I wanted some inexpensive tapestry hangings for the house, and beach towels work great! I designed these towel hangers to, well, hang up towels. Purchase your own Towel Hangers from Tryop.
The beach towel hangers worked so well, that I designed a wider version for "Beach Sheet" sized art towels. Purchase your own Towel Hangers from Tryop, and your own art towels from FineArtAmerica
I'm particularly happy with the way this "mountains and wind" motif turned out.
Twinworld Totem.
A decade or two ago my brothers and I optimistically set out to make a webcomic. We didn’t have an artist, so the creation was primarily that of worldbuilding.
You can read our notes here: http://hozz.peripheralarbor.com/
In the years since, I’ve been meditating with growing amazement on the setting that we developed, as it seems to have significant psychological depth.
Perhaps that’s all projected, but I’ve attempted to embed that meaning, especially from the origin story, in this image.
http://hozz.peripheralarbor.com/TwinWorld_origin
You can download the Blender file here.
Turns out laser engraving works really well on leather too. It's not just for wood and plastic.
My daughter wanted a box to keep her Wings of Fire graphic novels in. Of course, cardboard isn't enough of a challenge.
A view of the control software for the laser engraver. I also wrote a bit of Python code to export G-Code from Blender, so I could do custom designs that are difficult to pull off with the stock software.
I've gotten into the habit of laser engraving a clipboard every place I work. This is the latest one I did for my job at SEC. The circuit is a real PCB design from an old product.
Stations Of The Cross, watercolor painting by my wife, everything else by me.
Pocket Knife Name Engraving
Railing Gate Spacer Block, to reduce the width of a stairwell sufficiently to allow the installation of a baby gate. The laser engraving is under the paint, which gives it a neat texture. This is a "maze" pattern which I also used on the Table Legs above.
Another Wood Sword Engraving, this time with some engraved glass as well.
