I bought some rosewood plaques...

[Dee Gallo]

Hi everyone - I was asked to do a plaque, something I don't normally do, but it's one of those situations. So, the customer wanted a dark red mahogany wood, and I remembered people saying mahogany was not a great laser-friendly wood. I bought 6 plaques (good price, couldn't resist) from JDS: Rosewood Piano Finish, specifically noted as "laserable" in the catalog and confirmed by the sales person. I had no qualms about doing this job at all until they came.

These things are gorgeous! Now I'm afraid I'll ruin one, so I'm just asking if anyone has used this particular item before and if so, what were your results like?

I assume masking is a must, no problem, but does this stuff go dark on its own, does it burn like walnut or cherry? They want a photo, but now I'm thinking it might not be a good idea - do I have to invert?

Just trying to avoid a mess, dee

[Craig Hogarth]

I lasered one out of curiosty a while back and it engraves white. It doesn't look bad with a color fill, but it just didn't look right. Maybe had something to do with the high gloss and all, but I wasn't happy with the overall appearance. I'm not sure how a picture will come out, but I'm guessing it won't look all that good.

But if you wanna try, I suggest NOT inverting and use a colorfill. Inverted photos on rosewood come out really weird looking.

[Ray Mighells]

I doubt that a photo will take well on rosewood if there are distinct red/brown and blacks. You could probably convert your photo with your pen tablet into something nice and more compatible to the dark colors. Natural rosewood is very dense and oily. A piano finish may show a burned edge unless it is well masked. Maybe you could do a small test on the backside.

[Mike Null]

Dee

This material is less than ideal for engraving. I use a lot of these plaques but use either a gold foil or lacquered brass plates for the image.

You might want to consider a thin piece of marble for the engraving then glue it to the plaque.

I also use mahogany and it is one of the better woods for engraving contrary to what you've heard.

The photo shows a foil highlight with an acrylic stand off.

[Dee Gallo]

Just as I suspected - I think I will try a piece of acrylic on top and reverse engrave it, that sample of Mike's looks like a good combination - you can see the wood but get a good picture too. I'll have to look up some old posts for that process.

Thanks again to SMC for saving my bacon!

cheers, dee

[Mike Null]

Dee
You can buy that particular plaque from JDS with the acrylic and stand offs.

It's also available with glass instead of acrylic.

They are available in 8x10 and 9x12 sizes in rosewood and in black.

Just as a suggestion consider using ornate corner designs in foil behind the acrylic picture,

[Dee Gallo]

Since I already have the plaques, I thought I'd just buy the acrylic standoff... oh how naive I am! None of my catalogs has them as separate items, of course. I cannot believe the difference in prices too - I paid $6.75 each for the plain ones and they want $21 with the standoff. Sheesh. I wonder if I can make my own...

Mike- are you saying the gold foil is on the wood or on the back of the acrylic? It's a nice effect, adds extra dimension.

the adventure continues, dee

[Mike Null]

Dee

You hit the nail on the head with what you found on stand offs. I've found prices that are mind boggling.

The foil is on the wood and vectored with just the outline of the hearts.

Johnson Plastics sells the foil and are now selling stand offs but I don't know the price.

If you want a sample of the foil for this plaque PM your adress again and I'll send some to you. I have gold, silver and metallic blue.

Innotec also carries it and will send samples and catalog.

[Darren Null]

The standoffs won't be that difficult to make- just acrylic cut to size and some mirror screws from a hardware shop (mirror screws are normal screws, but come with an extra featureless mirrored dome that screws into the head of the screw once you've got it in, thus hiding the screwhead).

Your cut acrylic will have square edges, unlike the smoothly beveled edge of the proper ones, but you may be able to bevel it with a dremel and polish with brasso. Or just leave it square.

[Frank Corker]

I lasered one out of curiosty a while back and it engraves white. It doesn't look bad with a color fill, but it just didn't look right. Maybe had something to do with the high gloss and all, but I wasn't happy with the overall appearance. I'm not sure how a picture will come out, but I'm guessing it won't look all that good.

But if you wanna try, I suggest NOT inverting and use a colorfill. Inverted photos on rosewood come out really weird looking.


Craig, mahogany is dark, the picture would have to be a negative and not a positive. If it just didn't look right, then that was what the problem was.

[Mark Winlund]

I doubt that a photo will take well on rosewood if there are distinct red/brown and blacks. You could probably convert your photo with your pen tablet into something nice and more compatible to the dark colors. Natural rosewood is very dense and oily. A piano finish may show a burned edge unless it is well masked. Maybe you could do a small test on the backside.


It is highly unlikely that this plaque is rosewood; a "rosewood finish" is not rosewood! More than likely it is particle board with a thin, printed coating on it. That is why it will engrave white.

Rosewood has been illegal to import for many years due to restrictions of the Brazilian government. A piece the size aof a plaque would be expensive indeed!

Many years ago (more than 40) there was a company in San Diego that made gunstocks from rosewood... I could buy a pickup load of it for $150.

Mark

[Craig Hogarth]

Craig, mahogany is dark, the picture would have to be a negative and not a positive. If it just didn't look right, then that was what the problem was.

The thing that doesn't make it look right is the color of the rosewood. The rosewood and the lighter color subsurface doesn't give a very good "gray" appearance.

I reread my post and I didn't really do a good job of explaining. In my only attempt, I engraved then colorfilled with white paint. The small dots didn't go through the laquer so the white helped to bring them out. The rosewood color just didn't match well to the engraving. While I haven't tried it, I think not inverting and using a black color fill would give better results. I've done that with walnut and got better results with a black color fill than with a white.

[Mike Null]

Mark

You are correct it is not rosewood but rosewood stained veneer on particle board with a piano lacquer finish. It is higher quality by considerable than the paper/plastic laminated particle board.

[Dee Gallo]

It is highly unlikely that this plaque is rosewood; a "rosewood finish" is not rosewood! More than likely it is particle board with a thin, printed coating on it. That is why it will engrave white.

Rosewood has been illegal to import for many years due to restrictions of the Brazilian government. A piece the size aof a plaque would be expensive indeed!

Mark

REALLY! That explains the "it burns white" thing - so inverting is the way to go, maybe - I'll do a test and sacrifice one. Otherwise, it will be easy to make a standoff. My Neanderthal husband has a sanding tool for sharpening/polishing chisels which allows you to hold the bevel at whatever angle nice and square. I'll just have to commandeer it!

Thanks for sharing your experiences, dee

[Matt Wheeler]

It is highly unlikely that this plaque is rosewood; a "rosewood finish" is not rosewood! More than likely it is particle board with a thin, printed coating on it. That is why it will engrave white.

Rosewood has been illegal to import for many years due to restrictions of the Brazilian government. A piece the size aof a plaque would be expensive indeed!

Many years ago (more than 40) there was a company in San Diego that made gunstocks from rosewood... I could buy a pickup load of it for $150.

Mark

The JDS Piano finish Rosewood plaques are not Rosewood; however, they are a solid wood (drop one on it's corner and you'll be able to tell it's solid wood after you pick off the chipped thick coating). We use these plaques frequently, but never laser directly on the coating, always with a plate (lacquered, alumamark, etc.).

[Dee Gallo]

I did a test on a sacrificial plaque, and here are the results:

Using an Epilog 25, 300 dpi, no air assist - settings for raster sp25/p100, covered with transfer tape mask.

I miscalculated the spacing from the edge, it was 1/2" not 1/4"... my bad.

The plain B&W inverted bitmap came out fine, although showing a dot pattern. The un-inverted obviously came out ugly.

Next, I took the inverted bitmap and processed in Photograv, using cherry settings.I left the black background on this one, so it burned out white.

All 3 of these were done at 40% of original size on my CorelDraw doc., not before.

The last small pic was reduced in size before processing in Photograv.

The big portrait on the bottom was from a 72 dpi Facebook pic through Photograv after removing the background in Photoshop.

The lasered areas turned very light pinkish white, as expected, so I did 3 more settings to get the letters to turn dark: sp10, 5 and 2. The pink tinged white is actually a "portrait-friendly" white. I tested a number of different fonts as well. Even the script came out very clean, although you can't see it in this blurry picture.

BTW- there must be a layer of white in there, because the actual wood is like a pine color, as you cans ee through the keyholes in the back and on the SP 10 carving on the front. I wonder how they get the "rosewood" to look so good if there is a layer of white?

The actual plaque looks a lot better in person, my photo skills are crap. All in all I'm pretty happy that this material does laser just fine and I can now get on with making the actual plaque.

Thanks to everyone who ever posted something related to this, since I've read every post I could find. SMC rules!

cheers, dee

[Ray Mighells]

Great job. Looking forward to seeing the finished project.

[Dee Gallo]

For those who are interested, this stuff color fills just fine. The photo did not look good when filled with black, since the wood is too dark, but the lettering worked well. I even cleaned the paint off with De-Solve-It and washed the images in soap and water afterwards with no problems. This is still wet - I will buff off the stray paint later. The thick finish can take a pounding!

cheers, dee