Cutting boards on their own are not so great a gift, however, this little “how-to” guide will lead you to be able to create personal and useful gifts for friends and family this holiday season.
Use masking tape to mask the better side (the side with fewer knots and uneven spots) evenly and without overlap. This is to keep the overburn and ash dust off of the un-lasered portions. Keep the tape from overlapping or you may run the risk of having lines through your engraving.
Make sure everything is level and run it. We ran our cutting boards at a speed of 10 and a power of 35. We wanted our engraving to be nice and dark. If yours doesn’t turn out quite dark enough the first time, remember that you can run the file again so long as you don’t move the cutting board.
Un-taping is the most tedious portion of this process. But taping it up really is worth it. Make sure to get all of the little bits and pieces out of the letters.
If you want to coat it in something after engraving then you can treat it with mineral oil or beeswax every so often. It can be cleaned with granulated salt and a sliced lemon slightly more often. (For more information on this process you can check here.)
1. Mask it
Use masking tape to mask the better side (the side with fewer knots and uneven spots) evenly and without overlap. This is to keep the overburn and ash dust off of the un-lasered portions. Keep the tape from overlapping or you may run the risk of having lines through your engraving.
2. Laser it
Make sure everything is level and run it. We ran our cutting boards at a speed of 10 and a power of 35. We wanted our engraving to be nice and dark. If yours doesn’t turn out quite dark enough the first time, remember that you can run the file again so long as you don’t move the cutting board.
3. Un-tape it
Un-taping is the most tedious portion of this process. But taping it up really is worth it. Make sure to get all of the little bits and pieces out of the letters.
If you want to coat it in something after engraving then you can treat it with mineral oil or beeswax every so often. It can be cleaned with granulated salt and a sliced lemon slightly more often. (For more information on this process you can check here.)
For the visual learners, you can go here to watch a video on this process.
We hope you found this how-to helpful! If you’d like more information, contact us today!
0 Comments
I don’t like the idea of having to pull the tape off after the engraving process. However, it is better to have a good engraving than to be a little frustrated pulling off the masking tape. I know that using a spray bottle to moisten the tape can help a little, but I have only ever done that to get tape off of windows. I don’t know how it works on wood.
Removing the tape can be a bit tedious! But you can’t have beauty without a little pain, can you?
What kind of engraving machine do you have and recommend. While searching to purchase one i started to realize my full size wood slices and boards would not fit in many of the engravers.
Hello Emily,
We have 40w, 80w and 100w lasers available. The neat thing about our lasers is their open architecture. This patented design opens up so many possibilities and provides users with little to no size or weight restrictions. If you could provide me with the size of your wood pieces, I could send you in a better direction as far as the size of laser that would work best for your application!
Thanks,
Kristin
Same question as Emily.. I need some advice for which machines to to compare for mainly cutting boards.