Transfering laser printed text on to wood,

[Not your average framer]

For quite a long time I have known how to do most of this process, but I have not got around to finding out about the missing details. I guess that I've been too lazy until now.

First, this is the bit which I already knew about. Black and White laser printers produce black printing onto normal paper using toner, which is a very finely ground heat activated black powdered polymer. I already knew that this black powered toner will disolve in certain solvents. So hear is the idea! something is printed as a reverse image onto a normal cheap piece of paper, which is taped in place onto a nicely sanded piece of wood with the printing facing the surface of the wood and some cellulose thinners is applied to the reverse of the paper, which disolves the black toner and the liquid image soaks into the surface of the wood.

Next, here is the bit which I did not know about until today. There is a program which comes free as part of the Windows operatng system which is called "Paint". With this program there is a facility to reverse an image to produce a mirror image and also a facility to type and normal windows font at whater font size which may be wanting to use. After typing what you want, you can re-size it and print it, so that you can apply the text to a piece of wood.

This is where I have to admit that I have not tried this out so far and although I expect cellulose thinners to be a solvent which will disolve and transfer the image to the piece of wood I still need to get around to trying it myself. I have a more than one intended use for this process, one is to copy lines to cut to using my band saw, or scroll saw and the other is to add text to various wooden items to sell in my shop window. I hope that someone might find this useful.

Mark.

[Not your average framer]

I have been thinking about using this technique to add decoration to some small trinket boxes, which can be stained and varnished after some laser printed images of line drawings have been transfered onto the wood used to make the trinket boes. My instincts are leading me to think that maybe there might not be much money in making trinket boxes. I guess I will have to see. Some really upmarket locations can get good money for stuff like these, but my shop is not necessarily in one of those upmarket locations, I think.