This week’s #Tunesdaysong is an obscure B-side track on the deluxe edition of Mat Kearney’s Just Kids. (EDIT: Actually, it’s not that obscure. K-LOVE/AIR-1 have been playing it. Props to them) (Another awesome bonus track on this deluxe edition of the album is “Coming Home (Oregon).” Really fun tune, and totally worth a listen, but not what I want to feature today.)
I’ve been playing “Air I Breathe” pretty compulsively lately. Something about this song resonates deeply. Acoustically, it has a moving piano riff that ties the whole song together. The rhythm is a catchy clapping beat in the verses, that builds into a strong driving bass in the chorus. Lyrically, it’s full of poetic imagery and metaphor, as Kearney sings about bringing “fists to a pistol war” or the “song I bleed.” Thematically, it speaks about a constant struggle, the “same fight all over again,” and in it a surrender, a “white flag into the wind,” to God, who I assume is the audience of the song. A surrender to the God to whom Kearney confesses that he needs now, as the air he breathes, the God who has “loved [him] more.” All of this, with Kearney’s soft, yet strong, somber voice, creates a dynamic, heartfelt song of worship.
This week, it’s been the auditory equivalent of a mountain retreat, a place of peace combined with pulsating life, much like a breath of fresh air. Inspiration—when we surrender and breathe in God’s sustaining life.
I suppose I’ll post this in “Creative Writing;”
It’s a different kind of creative writing…
And the well-deserved credit goes to Valerie Yee for the hand-lettering of 1 John 4:18 that I woodburned and featured here.
It now comes the time that I brag about share with you one of my many fleeting hobbies: Woodburning!
It’s essentially taking a piece of wood, and using a really hot piece of metal to burn a design into it.
My first woodburning project was in eighth grade, I think. I burned Mark 8:34-38 into a little piece of poplar with a soldering iron (which is really not the tool for the craft). I also forgot the first “8” in the reference, so it became “Mark 34-38.” Oops. Not my best work. Looking back, it was actually quite horrendous. Unfortunately I don’t have the pictures to prove that point.
I picked up woodburning again last year, in March, and invested in an actual woodburning tool. Since then, I’ve completed four projects, all motivated by the need for a thoughtful birthday gift. Deadlines are a beautiful thing for motivation.
So this is how I do it:
Step 1: Design.
So it all starts with a design, a design that I’ll painstakingly transfer to the wood. From paper and ink to wood and charred wood. The first couple of projects were my own calligraphy, and then I started branching out, finding designs online or commissioning art from others. What I need is an image that is only positive and negative space, black and white, and whose lines are thick enough for me to get with my woodburning tool. No thin, close-together lines. There are definitely more artsy people who can do patterns and textures and shading, but I deal in the two-dimensional—bold letters and solid shapes.
Calligraphy!
… and something else, a DNA design
Step 2: Prepare wood.
Pretty self-explanatory. I start by finding a good plank of wood that’s not too knotty—actually, I like my wood free of knots, just wanted to make that pun—since the knots are the hard part of the wood, so they’re difficult to get a dark burn into, and they usually interfere with the design. One day I’ll work a knot into a design, but that hasn’t happened yet. Ideally, the grain of the wood should be a background aesthetic, fairly straight, and not too distracting. The grains also make burning difficult, but that’s unavoidable. Then comes the measuring, sawing, and sanding, which give me a nice, smooth, appropriately-sized block of wood to work with.
Step 3: Tracing.
So the first step after all that prep is transferring the design onto my plank of wood. So I print out my design, and then align it on my plank of wood, tape it in place, and start tracing the design onto the wood. I’ve considered using carbon paper and tracing like a normal human being, but I can see the carbon forming smudges where I don’t want them, and the pencil-like marks won’t survive any correctional sanding. I used to use a 0.5 mm mechanical pencil with a particularly strong metal tip, but recently I’ve built my own tool for the task. Essentially, I jammed a thick, sturdy darning needle you standard No. 2 wooden pencil. So I get needle-tip precision as I trace the edges of each letter and shape. And then, when I’m all done, I remove the paper and I’m left with the design clearly etched into the wood.
Tracing, with makeshift tool.
All done with tracing!
Step 4: Burning.
And now comes the actual woodburning. A beautifully tedious process. I start by carefully following the edges of each letter and shape with a fine point tool, staying within the lines I’ve previously etched into the wood. And then I use a thicker tip on my woodburning tool, with the intent of creating a smoother surface toward the middle center of those shapes. Throughout this process, if my hand slips and creates an undesirable mark, I can try to sand out the mistake, but it usually takes a good deal of sanding to remove even the tiniest mark, which tends to ruin the beautifully smooth surface established in Step 2. So it’s definitely better to go slow and be painstakingly careful. Hence, why I call it high-stakes coloring. It’s all about staying between the lines, it’s just that you’re filling in the shapes with a dangerously hot instrument that makes unforgivably irreversible marks.
Woodburning in progress.
Step 5: Finishing touches.
Many hours and many Netflix episodes later, when I’m satisfied with the depth and darkness of all the burns, I do a final sanding around the edges, to remove any soot or scratches that have accumulated during all the tracing and burning. And if I decide it’ll add a nice touch to the final product, I’ll sand the edges of the plank to create a bit of a bezel, and then burn them to create a simple border.
Finished.
Epilogue:
So this story comes full circle, because this last woodburning piece (pictured above), probably the best I’ve done so far, was done for the friend to whom I gave that pathetic soldering-iron piece years ago.
a cup of kimitea 