How to choose the plywood
for wood burning

Sorts of wood

Please note that we use certain types of wood for burning: birch, aspen, poplar. These types of wood are light (white), and the image is burned out in contrast. These types of wood contain little natural oils and resins. Therefore, the images are of higher quality.

The texture of these types of trees looks like this. But keep in mind that the quality of the surface and the intensity of the texture strongly depends on the quality of the wood and its processing. Wood of higher quality has a less bright texture than in these photos.

Birch:

Poplar:

Aspen:

We also tried to burn on the beech wood. This wood is darker and more dense. Therefore, we had to raise the temperature for burning, but there is no resin in it and the picture is very clear.

But the drawing is poorly burned on wood, which has a lot of resin. For example, pine is burned out badly – when heated, due to the hot tip, resin is released from the wood. This resin smears the pattern and does not allow the wood to heat well.

Plywood

We recommend using plywood grades no worse than BB-BB (in the CIS countries, such plywood has a grade 2/2). Plywood has a large area without knots and a smooth surface. This allows you to burn large pictures.

Sorts of plywood

The designation indicates the quality of one side of the plywood sheet. For example, the symbol CP / CP indicates that both sides of the sheet have a surface quality of CP. The designation B/BB means that one side of the plywood has a surface with quality B, and the second is BB.

We usually use birch plywood. One of the best varieties is Baltic birch. But the usual one is also quite suitable – the main thing is that it is of high quality. In stores, low-grade construction plywood is often found, which has cracks, dark yellow color and a lot of knots. It is not very convenient to work with such plywood – it turns out a lot of defective products.

Some of our clients use poplar plywood. This is also a good material, which does not have such a bright texture as the birch. But since birch and poplar have different densities, when burning on poplar, the temperature must be lowered, otherwise this plywood is strongly burned – a lot of defects are obtained.