How to Transfer Patterns to Wood

This evening my Aunt asked me to prepare a '25' sign for a cake that she is decorating for a weekend celebration. The last time I made a '50' for her from cardboard. Since I wanted this one to be more durable, I decided to cut the '25' from MDF.

You could say that I decided to up the ante for my aunty!!!!

Probably the most difficult part of the entire process lay in the transferring of the image onto the MDF sheet. I could've printed out the image onto self adhesive paper and stuck it onto the sheet. Unfortunately the scroll saw would rip up the paper as I made the cut. I could've used carbon paper to transfer the image onto the sheet, but my skills with tools far exceed those with a pen. In short - my handwriting is crap.

I decided to employ a little bit of science instead. Modern laser printers and copiers use powdered toner and heat to fuse the toner onto the paper. I assumed that if heat would then be applied to the toner it would remelt and transfer to the sheet.... Armed with this exhaustive research, I set about the task of applying pattern to MDF  .

I prepared a vector image of 2 & 5 overlapping as desired

Flipped the image.....

Soldering iron with a flat iron tip. In the background, Lynda and myself in Dubai, circa 1993 looking far cooler that the legally allowable limit at the time!!!!

The paper taped in place and ironed slowly over the pattern

The '25' transferred onto the MDF

Tomorrow I cut out the shape and paint it. The above process would not work with an Ink Jet printer as it uses a liquid which then dries. Besides why would you want to use a medium which uses the most expensive liquid in the world????

Think I'm kidding??? Check this out!!!!!