Burn a Picture on Wood Using a Magnifying Glass!

Harness the power of Apollo the sun god and char a masterpiece into a boring old piece of wood! Lucky for you too. It only costs around $1! (assuming you have a piece of wood to use and not including the ink used to print the picture) The supplies consist of:

A magnifying glass (Dollar tree)
A piece of wood
A printer
Patience

I would DEFINITELY advise sun glasses. (No,the sun glasses you bought from the dollar store are probably not the best idea) The sun glasses should be good enough that after five minutes after starting the burning, the insides of your eye lids don't appear white when you blink.

Step 1: Edit Your Image

Take the image you want to use and open up your editing software. I am using gimp, a free software that does basically the same thing as Photoshop. I chose an eagle drawing off of a website and loaded it up on gimp. The picture I used was already black and white but if your image isn't, then make it black and white before you mess with the threshold. If you can't figure out how, look it up, it is quite easy.

Step 2: Export, Print, and Apply

Export your image through gimp and print it. When you put the paper on the wood, I would advise taping it.

Step 3: BURN IT!

Before you starting blazing a piece of paper by concentrating the rays of the sun, PUT ON YOUR DANG SUNGLASSES. Honestly it hurts without them and it leaves a white dot where you were looking when you close your eyes. Once those UV protecting glasses are resting on your face, take your magnifying glass and have it facing the sun. Play with it till you get the light into a small dot on the ground. Once ready, aim the light at a line and start following it with the beam. Burn anything black on the paper. Occasionally blow at the paper to clear the path of the beam from chard paper bits. Remember, it has to go through the paper AND the wood so check its path every once and a while.

Step 4: Finish

Once all the black is gone, check to make sure it doesn't look incomplete. After I had removed the paper I noticed the eye looked weird so I made it bigger. Enjoy!