Went to Lowes today to buy a can of Polyshades Mission Oak, $10 for a spray can. They didn’t carry it at Home Depot.
Test on 3mm Baltic birch at 75mm/sec. The right r2-d2 has two coats of the polyshades which was masked by blue painters tape. Some of the polyshades got under the tape on the edges. Maybe a coat of shellac before masking would fix that or better quality masking.
I can see this stuff being useful for certain types of raster engravings.
Try maple ply wood… I get awesome contrast without any additives
@Alex_Krause I can get pretty good contrast by slowing down the raster engraving speed. I want to see if I can increase the machine speed significantly. Some of the larger engravings are taking a long time. By just burning off the masking and then using the polyshades to darken. More experimenting is required to see if it is worth the trouble.
The commercial version of this is called Laserdark but it cost $24 (with shipping) for one spray can.
@Jim_Fong I’ve been using polyshade myself and I find that sealing the surface first definitely helps to prevent bleeding. But I also can use with unsealed surfaces if I sand it well with 220 grit or finer and using a roller or squeegee to get the tape down tight on the surface. It’s also important with unsealed surfaces to use several light coats.
