Drawing on Etherwave - materials

As I'm prepping the wood cabinet for my Etherwave, I've decided to draw on it, but I have some questions about materials and conductivity.

I see you can't use black paint, because it contains either graphite or carbon which is conductive. So I'm going for a natural wood finish, but I also want to draw on it.

I was going to draw in pencil and seal it under the urethane wood finish.... but pencil contains graphite.
Will the amount of graphite in a pencil drawing on the wood cabinet affect performance?

Has anyone here done drawing on their theremin cabinet, and if so, what materials did you use?

What about wood burning? (more work, but less conductivity).

How about coffee... if I etch the drawing into the wood, and rub coffee grounds in it... that shouldn't be conductive right?

or wax crayons?

For the stain, I've been reading about prematurely aging wood with vinegar and steel wool... I'm assuming that should be fine too?

by wood burning you mean  something like this? or how about china- ink for some black parts? i placed different coloured papers on my ew and the effect was minimal, honestly, most colors can get tuned out afterwards. it depends on the thickness also, the thicker the worse of course.

some wood, like oak, contain stuff like tannin, so they can react nice with substances of some kind. i see no problems with any of those treatments at all. as long as the steel-wool is removed! 

aging the surface by sandblasting increases the wood texture also tremendously.

edit: (apologies for that complete nerdism) according to newtons or goethes understanding of colors, it seems that the nicest black is just a very dark purple. so mixing might be a workaround for a black without conductivity.

Paint conductivity is way overrated IMO.  Do what you want and retune it as necessary.

affirmative nods... creativity first.

Paint conductivity is way overrated IMO.  Do what you want and retune it as necessary. - dewster

I agree also.

A wee while ago I looked into this and came up with black lacquer, of which there is an example below.
(This is a UK company but there must be US equivalents) 

http://www.axminster.co.uk/liberon-black-french-polish-250ml

Roy

(edit: I think it would be possible to stain the wood with a solution of Potassium Permanganate - this is very darkly purple but will decompose on the wood to give Potassium Hydroxide and Manganese dioxide. Manganese dioxide is dark brown and will not be conductive I think. Remember though to head any safety warnings for using it if you do use it.)

Does any one know what kind of wood the Etherwave kit is made from?

I'm thinking of drawing an elaborate tree, that is the same sort of tree that the wood came from...

I'm leaning toward etching the drawing in with a knife, then rubbing either coffee grounds or blood into that, sanding around it, and then staining and finishing overtop... maybe.

for the kits, the wood is from ash. a tree with so many legends about....so... blood&chocolate and good luck. 

My friends last night told me that staining a design with blood would be too creepy or morbid... I never thought of it as creepy, and now I'm disappointed that it might be read that way... My original thinking was that blood is an organic material that stains... and it has a beautiful link because when playing the theremin, the human body becomes a part of the circuit... so there is this electrical / organic link between the human body and the electrical circuit... so I thought blood would be a beautiful reference to that body/electronic connection.... also, the branches of a tree look kind of like veins of the circulatory system...

I had also been thinking about a scene in the documentary on Robert Moog, when he's in the garden talking about how the sun gave energy to the green peppers he's growing, and then he would eat the peppers and that same energy would go from the sun, to the green pepper, then into him.  I thought it was so deeply beautiful how Robert Moog talked about electrical energy in such a comprehensive way... i remember another scene where he talked about how when he repairs an analogue synthesizer from a musician, the musician's energy is still in the circuitry, and as he works on it, his energy passes into it... (i think i'm remembering that correctly).... this idea that electrons from our body pass into the circuitry and interact with it... and not only that...  but it goes beyond us humans too... from the sun to the food we eat, the water we drink, into us, and then into the circuitry to make the music... it's so beautiful and interconnected.

hence thinking of referencing the tree from which the wood came, (honouring it's past life), as well as the blood from my own body (which carries my energy, giving me life and allowing me to become a part of the circuit that makes the music).

I was sad to hear that people might find that morbid or creepy... so maybe I should go with coffee or chocolate.  Undecided. :-/

c'mon, blood stains beautifully after a while! time wound all heals. to see any morbidity in using that has more to do, how our minds are influenced by a skew sight of things, or how far from nature we are. some are disguted and even faint by the plain view of such natural juices, while having some industrial confected food! so controversal. they don't want to know how banana or pineapple flavor is made off: for example, take some butanoic acid....

i worked a lot on old buildings and oxblood was widely used on beams for frame houses, to protect the wood.(no b.s) now replaced by paint.

ash, the mighty world tree yggdrasil....the idea of a world-tree is spread around all the world in legends and myths, from nordic to mayan. so your ideas make sense, at least to me....

xocolatl for everybody.