A word for "engraving a pattern onto wood or metal using a redhot instrument"

Question

I have this image in my head of someone engraving letters or patterns onto a piece of wood (flat or not) or on metal (but it doesn't have to be both, either wood or metal is fine) with an instrument that is made of metal (iron?) and it is red-hot, which is how the work is done. I am sure there must be a word and it is used in art, but not only.
My first guess was incise, but it does not involve fire/heat:

to cut the surface of something carefully with a sharp tool (Cambridge)

Is there a verb that describes the same action but using fire or a red-hot metal instrument? (I wonder what the name of that would be also, but my main question is the verb).
The result looks something like that

I need it for a metaphor:

This experience was _______ in the depths of his being as with a red-hot iron (instrument - could it be chisel?)

Edit: I should have mentioned that the experience is not necessarily negative, though it may involve pain. In fact it is not. It has just been indelibly engraved in the soul.

Jeff Zeitlin · Answer

Since you’re not really limiting the material that is being burned, the best word is probably pyrography, sometimes called pokerwork. When done on wood, the tool is usually called a woodburner, but might be a poker, a branding iron, or (improvised) a soldering iron.

Answered by Jeff Zeitlin on July 1, 2021

Juhasz · Answer

The mark and the tool used to make the mark are both called a brand.

brand noun
...
3 a (1) : a mark made by burning with a hot iron to attest manufacture or quality or to designate ownership
...
5 : a tool used to produce a brand

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brand

Today, we're so used to capitalism and so unused to branding irons, that it may seem like the above is the secondary meaning.  Perhaps it seems like first there was the concept of a brand as "a particular make of goods" and then we named the tool that made the brand label.  But the reverse is true.
The word brand seems to come from

"Old English brand, brond "fire, flame, destruction by fire; firebrand, piece of burning wood, torch,"

https://www.etymonline.com/word/brand

Chris H · Answer

I suggest branded (or burnt). It's not exactly what you were thinking of, but very close, and a verb that's used metaphorically in this sense. The instrument for branding would be an iron (for burning it could be a poker).

user405662 · Answer

Sear

To char, scorch, or burn the surface of.

...

b. To cause to be felt or remembered because of emotional intensity.

The incident seared into the nation's memory.

[American Heritage Dictionary]

The definitions given above are literal and figurative, respectively. The second one fits the bill nicely.
Thus you could write:
This experience was seared in the depths of his being as with a red-hot iron.

A word for "engraving a pattern onto wood or metal using a redhot instrument"

4 Answers

Sear

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