we’re going to be learning about how to
do some homemade custom wood burning
without a branding iron
not long ago I saw a video by youtuber
Laura Kampf who showed how you can use a
simple chemical process to burn wood and
I thought it was just the coolest thing
ever I started doing some research on it
I found articles and crafting magazines
going back seven or eight years talking
about this process and it is really cool
and super simple to do really the only
two ingredients we need for this are
water and ammonium chloride in her video
Laura Kampf says you can buy ammonium
chloride in a pharmacy and while that
may be true where she is in Germany it
doesn’t seem to be the case here in the
United States and you’re best off buying
it online there are two forms that it
comes in you can buy bags of the
powdered ammonium chloride or you can
buy it as a block of what’s called Sal
ammoniac it’s the exact same thing just
compressed into a brick form I already
have some left over because this is the
same chemical we used in our negative X
experiments to start will one about 1/2
cup of water and 1 teaspoon of our
powdered ammonium chloride to get this
into a powder form I’m just gonna start
shaving bits of it off this brick and if
any of it is in chunks that are too big
[Music]
those are the ingredients you need at
this point we have the solution that
works to chemically burn our wood there
are several methods we can use to apply
this on to our wood let’s start by
trying out a paint brush we’ll take the
ammonium chloride solution and we’ll
draw whatever design we want to under
the wood and we’ll then hit it with a
heat gun the heat will activate the
ammonium chloride and burn our design
into the wood permanently I’m just gonna
go for a vine and leaf design
[Music]
that’s a pretty simple design let’s see
how it takes when we hit it with our
heat this is something you’ll need to be
a little bit patient with it doesn’t
activate immediately it really has to
get pretty hot before the burning starts
happening I can see the design starting
to appear right now it just looks like
sort of a pale yellow
and now we can see that we have
successfully burned our design into the
wood I may have been a little bit hasty
in some spots
if you concentrate the heat gun on one
place too long you’re likely to start
burning the wood itself everywhere that
the heat gun is hitting rather than just
where you painted the ammonium chloride
so you do want to be careful about how
you apply to heat one of the cool things
about using this liquid to make your
designs in the wood is that there are a
lot of different ways you can apply it I
was using a paint brush I also have this
paint brush style pen which you can fill
with whatever liquid you want I’ll try
pouring some of our ammonium chloride
into this pen and then I should be able
to just write with the tip of the brush
[Music]
my handwriting is pretty much garbage so
this isn’t gonna look very good but
conceptually you can just use your own
handwriting to write something out and
then burn it into a piece of wood really
fun let’s try a few other things I’ve
got a small piece of towel that I’ve
soaked in our ammonium chloride solution
and I’m gonna try using a stamp and see
if I can get a stamp to print onto the
wood and then burn that in another great
method is a three-step process that
involves using stickers as a form of
mask you can use commercially available
stickers if you’ve got them in the right
shape or if you’ve got access to a vinyl
cutter to cut custom shapes you can do
that as well let’s try taking some of
these large alphabet stickers and using
them as a mask to make a large welcome
sign on this board
our sticker has worked as a mask against
the clear paint and will now apply our
ammonium chloride mixture over the
lettering we should only get the burning
the ammonium chloride solution is
relatively safe but if you are going to
be using this trick on anything that’s
going to be in contact with food make
sure you wash it well first one thing I
really like about this technique is how
easy it is to apply to curved surfaces
as well as flat lines a real branding
iron may have some advantages over this
technique but it would also have a
fairly hard time burning evenly onto a
curved surface there’s one more thing
that I want to try and that’s using a
piece of sticker paper to cut out my own
stencil and use that as a mask instead
of using the pre-bought stickers that
I’ve had before
the ammonium chloride and water solution
is super easy to make and easy to apply
in a variety of different methods so you
can completely choose the design you
want to burn into wood guys thanks for
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that’s all for today have fun be safe and see you tomorrow