Two Worlds Colide?

August 28, 2024

If you have read the series so far of the S & O Story, you know I (we) started with bigger projects.... tables, headboards, shelves, etc. As time changed Silva & Ore and my life the possibilities became almost endless!!!

After getting the laser and being mostly self taught, I have found myself almost overwhelmed with everything I can do now! The whole purpose of the laser was to up the solid wood game with personalization and customization abilities.

Now I almost feel split.... There is the solid side. There is the laser side. And many times they collide as I originally intended. But not as much as I had projected.

But when they do collide, it is pretty magical!! Here I wanted to show you pics of that collision and stories to go with them!

The Christmas tree ornament slash gift card holder. I just designed these recently. We all know we like to find cute simple things to give with a gift card! This combines the perfect combo. Remove the gift card and now ya got a Christmas ornament! Note: these are shown with a business card but fit a credit card sized gift card with a tad bit of room for the receipt to include with it if needed. You can find all the styles on my FB page, they'll be added to the website soon and they will be found in stores too.... after Halloween!! Lets get through that first!

The rings!!! Sorry if this is offensive. Also, engravings this tiny doesn't engrave as clean and fine as I would like BUT it still gets the point across! I do not have these rings on the website but I can make them for you and whatever size you want in maple, cedar, cherry or walnut. You can find them (not engraved) at Knotty by Nature in Grafton in all different sizes and shapes.

The combo of solid and laser with these is obvious but what you may not see is that they are also laser cut to size!!!

Monogram wall hanging!!!! This is a combo of walnut ply provided by Kuntz Carpentry Warehouse in Trenton, IL and solid maple. The circle is planed, jointed, hand cut, sanded and finished here in shop. While the walnut ply monogram is laser cut! Oh, and by the way, the monogram is designed by me using the laser program, Lightburn. Its a pretty awesome combination!

Flight paddles! I have been making flight paddles since 2017/2018 ish... I started making them long ago and used a wood burner to burn them with trees and fun stuff I would 'draw'. With the use of the laser I was hooked because of the precision and very clean look! I could still design the engravings by modifying and redesigning clip art but I do miss hand burning sometimes! I am soooo super impressed by those artists who burn with such precision that it puts the laser to shame! Y'all are true artists out there!!

But here is the combo of hand cut solid cedar and laser engraving for a flight paddle.

The solid wood earrings!!! These are laser cut out of fall off pieces from other projects that i run through the planer to thin it to 1/8". I realize i could just purchase thin solid wood but I prefer to use every last darn piece I can!

I try to keep as much out of the fire pit as possible!

Solid Monstera clock? Yes please!

How is this combined with the laser?????

I redesigned a leaf using Lightburn to make the leaf cutable and as stable as I could with those narrow parts of the leaf and redesigned it to make it more sandable. If that makes sense. Then the laser was used to simply burn a very light line so i could hand cut it out with a band saw. The laser didn't do much with this application, but it was still a very good tool to make this happen! Sometimes I even make templates with the laser to cut out shapes.

This clock led me to make more clocks, both laser cut and combos!!!