I’ve been experimenting with lasercutting type-high wood to make letterpress blocks for letterpress printing with, greatly helped by forum posts on the BriarPress.org letterpress community site about topics like type-high wood/shims and lasercutting viability (for example). I wrote up my work to share there in return, and wanted to blog it as well in case it can help others.

Here’s the best lasercut letterpress block I’ve made yet! I’ll update with a print once I next get to use the local Vandercook with it. Photo of a block of wood in a lasercutter, being cut to show a historical illustration of a Luddite, and the text "critical tech! no 'innovation' serving profit over people". Photo is from after 5 total lasercutter passes. Photo digitally flipped for readability.

Here’s the art I used to make it, digitally flipped for readability (for non-letterpress folks: the cut block needs to be reflected horizontally, so when pressed to paper with ink the image comes out correctly): Screenshot of a black and white SVG image file of a historical illustration of a Luddite, and the text "critical tech! no 'innovation' serving profit over people". Photo digitally flipped for readability.

Fun images first, followed by in-depth details of what/why/how below

Skip past them for detailed info on why/what/how, for folks who want that. Any cuts that look like I made them wrong (that are readable left to right, thus would print wrong) are actually digitally flipped to make your reading easier; I just got was lazy about including a note to that effect on each one.

Earliest tests, using only 1 lasercutter pass

These produced pretty shallow cuts; they could be printed okay on a Vandercook, with some of the chatter because I was lazy and wanted to print a bunch of slightly-different-heights cuts at the same time without packing under individual cuts to balance them all, and also didn’t sand/seal these at all before printing (some of the chatter was from the height being shallow, though). I also deliberately kept some of the prints with more chatter, as I thought the wood-grain effect was neat, and wanted to remember to explore deliberately including it on some cuts in the future (as well as cutting deeper to avoid it on most cuts). Photo of a letterpress wood block inked in navy ink, with an image on it of a pointing hand that says "printed by a trans printer!" The word "trans" is on the back of the gand, in Erin Moore's groovy Vision font. The photo has been digitally flipped for readability. Photo of a letterpress print made on white paper with navy ink of a pointing hand that says "printed by a trans printer!" The word "trans" is on the back of the gand, in Erin Moore's groovy Vision font. A corona of woodgrain pattern surrounds it.

Photo of a box of 5 letterpress blocks cut from maple wood with a lasercutter Photo of a letterpress print made on white paper with navy ink of a pointing hand. A corona of woodgrain pattern surrounds it.

Photo of letterpress print blocks made from wood and inked in navy ink. One says "Zine Bakery" in a pixelated font next to an icon of a zine, and the other says "made by a trans printer!" in a serif font. The photo has been digitally flipped for readability. Photo of a letterpress print made on white paper from navy ink. The bottom line says "Zine Bakery" in a pixelated font next to an icon of a zine, and the top line says "made by a trans printer!" in a serif font.

This one is especially fun, as it started as a shape cut from craft foam using safety scissors and printed on a BookBeetle; I then scanned the print, cleaned that scan digitally, lasercut it into wood, and printed from that.

Photo of a lasercut dog image with long legs, raised up on a block of wood

You can see the cut is fairly shallow: Photo of a lasercut dog image with ling legs, raised up on a block of wood, viewed from the side to show how the image sits higher than the rest of the wood Photo of a letterpress print block made from a wood blick on white paper inked in navy ink. It shows a very long-legged dog silhouette with a woodgrain texture. Photo of a letterpress print block made from wood and inked in navy ink. It shows a very long-legged dog silhouette.

Here’s the original BookBeetle/craft foam print the above cut came from: Photo of a cardboard sheet holding a craft foam cut-out of the silhouette of a very long-legged dog, covered messily in mottled fluorescent blue and pink ink from being used to print with a BookBeetle letterpress. Photo of a Bookbeetle letterpress-printed print of the silhouette of a very long-legged dog, printed in mottled fluorescent blue and pink ink on white paper. You can see some extra ink splots outside the silhouettes from where I didn't cut a frisket to protect the parts of the paper I didn't want printed on

Testing different laser methods & settings

Next two photos are digitally flipped for readability, zoomed in to show text height from block surface. On the “zines zines zines” block, each word looks slightly different because a different lasercutter method was used on each, with raster cutting deepest (far right) but also burning most, cut (far left) cutting least, and etch in the middle. It probably didn’t help I used subpar random mystery Ebay wood… Photo of two rectangles of wood cut into visa lasercutter to say "dogs" and "zines zines zines"; on the latter, each word looks slightly different because a different lasercutter method was used, with raster cutting deepest but also burning most, cut cutting least, and etch in the middle Photo of two rectangles of wood cut into visa lasercutter to say "dogs" and "zines zines zines"; on the latter, each word looks slightly different because a different lasercutter method was used, with raster cutting deepest but also burning most, cut cutting least, and etch in the middle. The photo is tilted to show the letters are cut to varying depths in the wood; all letters would be feelable with fingers, but only some are deep enough to easily get a clean letterpress print from them

Photo digitally flipped for readability. Sometimes there is flame; optimally, there is not any (power was too high and/or speed too slow): Photo of a rectangle of wood inside a lasercutter, blossoming with orange flame at one end; the words "zine" twice in arow are visible on the wood's surface (inage digitally flipped for legibility)

Best outcome yet

“Critical tech: no ‘innovation’ serving profit over people.” 5 lasercutter passes, passes 1, 2 or 3?, 5 shown below (final photo digitally flipped for readability): Photo of a block of wood in a lasercutter, being cut to show a historical illustration of a Luddite, and the text "critical tech! no 'innovation' serving profit over people". Photo is from during the 1st of 5 eventual lasercutter passes. Photo of a block of wood in a lasercutter, being cut to show a historical illustration of a Luddite, and the text "critical tech! no 'innovation' serving profit over people". Photo is from after 2 or 3 total lasercutter passes. Photo of a block of wood in a lasercutter, being cut to show a historical illustration of a Luddite, and the text "critical tech! no 'innovation' serving profit over people". Photo is from after 5 total lasercutter passes. Photo digitally flipped for readability.

Why do this at all?

Because experimenting is fun; because you can make longlasting cuts from your own or other favorite images, including things you can’t buy historical or new cuts of; to design your own type (very advanced to do well); to have type in hard- or impossible-to-find (at least in the U.S.) languages and scripts (ditto). If you have free access to a good-enough lasercutter (eg thorugh a local library or college makerspace), the total cost can be very cheap in general (just the cost of evenly-cut maple blocks and one of many options for materials to make a shim bringing it up to type-high).

What lasercutter & settings?

I’m using the VLS 6.75 lasercutter (aka “Vader”) in Scholars’ Lab’s makerspace, for which I wrote my first zine (a cheatsheet on cutting and etching on acrylic using this lasercutter). You need to be trained by us before using it, but we offer both periodic workshops and 1:1 training by appointment. Non-commercial use is free, but you do need to bring your own materials to cut/etch (unlike our 3D printers, where we provide the filament for free for most non-commercial projects). Luckily, materials can be fairly inexpensive, starting from scrap cardboard, and even nicer looking wood can be fairly reasonable (e.g. a nicely finished bamboo cutting board from Ikea is a great lasercutting block, and costs ~$10).

The final 2 passes I did on the Luddite/critical tech cut above were set to 90 power, 90 speed, and 500 PPI, using 5 total complete lasercutter passes. I’ll continue tweaking those, and ideally I would have done maybe 7-8 passes but I ran out of time. (I varied the settings over the course of the 5 passes, but each took around 13 minutes, which included time the laser was doing nothing cutting the empty space above where my material was because I didn’t know how to move the start point lower, lol).

The SVG file producing the cut was color inverted so that the parts I wanted cut away were black, and the parts I wanted to remain raised were white. I also horizontally flipped the image so it would come out correctly readable when printed.

Finding a lasercutter

If you haven’t used a lasercutter before but are curious, and can’t get to our physical space at UVA, I encourage you to ask a local or college/university librarian if they have or know of any nearby that can be used—with cheaper and smaller versions becoming more available, at least in the U.S. these seem to be popping up in more makerspaces in the last couple years. I’m not sure, but think the standing rather than tabletop kind are the ones with enough power (and safe venting requirements) to cut deep enough into hard woods, though other materials are also possible.

Materials

Lots of good posts if you search the Briar Press forum. For wood, end-grain maple seems to hit the sweet spot for price, hardness, results, but I’ve seen folks mention other options including cherry hardwood.

  • So far I’ve used type-high, maple wood blanks from Virgin Wood Press, McKellier, and Ebay old letterpress blanks with the lead piece chipped off (don’t put lead in a lasercutter, the fumes are toxic)
  • Non-type-high wood: get wood from anywhere cheaper (eg McClains) then add a shim (of wood, 3D printed block, tape, ?) to bring it to type-high
  • Other materials: acrylic (I’ve used this in a lasercutter, lovely results, very quick <2min cuts, can get fun seethrough neon colors!); harder (grey, not “EZ Cut”) or other labeled-laser-safe linoleum (thanks for advice from Ryan Cordell*)

What’s involved: basic

Basic lasercutter use is not overly complicated to learn, if you have some comfort using computer programs, especially saving image files containing letters or shapes from any drawing program. You use a drawing program such as Adobe Illustrator to create the lines or shape you want to cut or etch—any program that can save as an SVG file—give the lasercutter some info (e.g. what kind of material you’re cutting, how thick the material is), and position the material or image so the cuts happen in the right places, then click a button and it does the rest.

A more even and precise press (e.g. Vandercook, rather than hand-pressing or craft press) may be able to print cleaner from shallower-lasercut blocks.

What’s involved: intermediate

I’ve found the non-basic part to be figuring out the best lasercutter settings (such as speed and power) for the material you’re using. Harder materials take more power to cut into and to cut deeper. With wood, speed and power impact whether you get from zero burning, to small flames, to burnt wood.

So far, I’ve had the most success playing with these using cheap sample wood (though preferably of same/similar wood type and height to what you’ll ultimately use, so the settings work the same) to find the highest power (deepest cutting) and highest speed (finishes fastest) that don’t overly burn the wood, then doing multiple passes of the lasercutter (not touching the material at all in between, so that it remains exactly perfectly registered with the cuts going in the exact same places each time).

What’s involved: advanced

I’m not at any advanced stage doing this yet :) but lots of folks are, including users on the Briar Press forum, and some of the folks producing new wood type available via online stores too. Cordell recommended starting cuts on a lasercutter, then using a CNC router to dig out most of the wood farther away from the left-as-type-high bits faster and deeper than a lasercutter can.

There are also a number of folks creating blocks and type completely via CNC router; I took a very fun and informative virtual workshop from Ryan Molloy on this topic via Partners in Print last fall.

* P.S. Thanks to Ryan Cordell (Skeumorph Press) for generously sharing insights on his lasercutting letterpress experience. And unrelatedly, to the extremely generous Briar Press forum users platenman and jnbirdhouse, who’ve helped Scholars’ Lab be able to get closer to starting to teach letterpress to the public!