A couple of years ago a friend gave me a microwave oven that she thought was broken. It wasn't but so it goes. I buried it in a mound in the backyard as a decoy for anyone using metal detectors to find my buried treasure (editor's note - there is no buried treasure, but no one need know that). Over time the soil eroded and there it was - white goods (as they call appliances at the salvage yard) poking up through the dirt. So I dug it out and dragged it into the tractor shed.
While reading various trade magazines I kept coming across some interesting patterns burned into wood, to wit:
I thought that was kind of cool - has kind of an Asian vibe to it, and it's done with electricity, and one of the preferred sources for power is a used high voltage transformer from a microwave oven. Hmm, I have one of those.
So I started doing some research and what do you know - now fractal wood burning is being banned by various groups due to people getting electrocuted during the process. That's not good. I mean it's a nice design and all, but is it worth dying for? Not to this old lumberjack.
A wiser approach would be to use software to generate fractals and Mandelbrot sets and Julia sets and all of the other, many variations on that theme.
Anyway, I ended up taking the microwave to the scrap yard, got four cents a pound for it (what's that, a dollar or two?) and decided to stick with tried and true old-time woodworking using my 3D modeling software and my CNC:
The old ways are still the best ways, eh?
