Pyro Pen

Hi all,
I've managed to do another pen this week and rather than just show it to you, I thought it might be useful if I talked a little bit about how I do it. It might not be the best way or the only way, but it is my way and it works for me.

I have been doing pyrography for about 8 years and I have discovered a few things that might be helpful to those who are interested in this sort of artwork, regardless of the item upon which they are doing the pyrography. It might be a pen, a bowl or any other item made of wood or leather.

There are two main issues when it comes to pyrography, that is if you want to do any sort of detailed work. If you want to create stuff that looks like it has been in the fire of London, that's fine, get yourself a blow torch. However, if you want control over your light and dark areas you will need a decent pyrography machine. By that I mean machines like a Razer Tip or a Peter Child Machine.

I started off with one of those cheap sub £20 jobbies that has the branding iron type tips, you know the one, it looks like a soldering iron on steroids. However, it didn't take me long to discover that I if I wanted to do finer work with some consistency then I needed something better. I purchased a Peter Child machine and I have used that ever since.

Here is my latest pen.

It has an overlapping banding design that would be very difficult to do if I used the cheap pyrography iron. In fact, I think it would be almost impossible.

The reason for this is two fold. Firstly, the cheaper pyrography irons do not have any temperature control, which means that it is easy to get over-burn. Over-burn is simply when the heat from the pyrography iron does not actually burn, but discolours the lighter wood that you are trying to preserve. If you look at the pen above, it would be difficult to get sharp lines with a cheap pyrography iron.

The second issue is the size of the tips that comes with a bottom of the range pyrography iron. They are just to big to allow burning with any sort of finesse. I use a spoon tip for almost all of my work with my Peter Child machine because I find that it gives me more control.

Above, you can see the two main types of tip for a Peter Child machine. I use the one on the left because it allows me to use the back of the spoon for shading and the edge if the spoon for drawing fine lines. It really is very versatile. However, don't get thinking that the Peter Child machine is restricted to these two types of tip because it isn't. These wonderful tips below, although not specifically made for a Peter Child machine, will work with it quite happily. One has to be careful though with tips because one can finish up buying tip after tip when most effects can be achieved with a spoon tip.

Here is picture of the pen I showed last week, all of the work on here was done with a spoon tip.

Another plus point for the more expensive pyrography iron is the size of the pen. The more expensive ones are about the size of a marker pen and that gives you much more control than the cheaper version which is like trying to draw with a turkey drumstick. You will also find that the decent iron is cooler to hold, whereas the cheap one gets very hot to the touch in a very short while.


So if you are thinking of taking up pyrography, getting a decent pyrography iron is the best way to go. In my next post I will tell you what the second issue is that I have discovered about pyrography.

Much of what I have said here can be found by clicking on the pyrography tab at the top of the page, so please go there if you would like more information on the subject. And please feel free to ask any questions about pens or pyrography.