Homemade Woodburning Temperature Control

Have you wanted to try woodburning, (Pyrography), but those cheap pens are so hot you find it difficult to create anything with them without making inadvertent burn spots on your picture? This is especially true when trying to use one of these on gourds. Gourds burn at a lower temperature than most woods do, and just an accidental touch of the tip of one of these woodburning pens to the surface of the gourd leaves a black spot on your gourd. It is for this reason I created the Homemade woodburning temperature control.

To make this controller you will need:

A plastic Light switch box

A 12- or 14-gauge extension cord

A dimmer switch

3 wire nuts

When selecting your dimmer switch, preferably get one that either turns to the off position or slides to the off position. If you get the type that you push on or off, you will find there are times when the switch will get bumped or hit, and you can't be sure if this turned it on or off. These cheap pens take a while to heat up, so you do not want it on when you think it is off. If you get the type that you turn all the way down until it switches off, or the slider type that slides to the off position, you have removed the guesswork when using your pen.

To make your homemade woodburning temperature control, cut your extension cord in half, leaving enough length on both pieces to have some room outside the box, and on the plug end, make sure you leave enough length so you can easily reach an outlet without having to put your controller on the floor.

Put the cut ends of the wire into the plastic switch box, and tie a knot in it so it cannot pull out of the box. If the cord pulls out of the box it could cause wires to pull out of the wire nuts and could be an electrocution or fire hazard.

Be sure to strip about 3/8 inch of rubber coating from the wires you are going to connect.

One wire of the extension cord, (like the black wire), would connect to the dimmer switch on both ends of the extension cord. For example, the dimmer switch has a red wire and a black wire, you take the black wire from one side of the extension cord and using the wire nut, connect it to the red wire on the dimmer switch. Then take the black wire from the other end of the extension cord and using another wire nut, connect that black wire to the black wire coming out of the dimmer switch. The other colored wire of the extension cord you simply connect back together. In the image provided on mine, I used the white wire to connect to the dimmer switch and connected the black wires back together.

Carefully test this homemade woodburning temperature control one step at a time, when plugging it in to the wall, be ready to pull it out quickly in case you wired it wrong and shorted out the wires. Once you confirm it is wired OK, test it out with a table lamp or other incandescent light. You can use this as a dimmer for your table lamps as well when not using it for woodburning.

As a final touch and for your reference in woodburning, put some marks and numbers around the dial or along the slide of your dimmer switch. This will help you in learning what settings you need for specific tasks.

Gourds are an artistic medium. If you would like to learn more about gourds, please visit The Gourd Reserve, with over 800 pages of gourd related information and artwork. You can also find more short articles on gourds and growing gourds here on my AC producer page.