Help! I am running out of ideas! My wooden utensils are being moved around and not staying in place when engraving. I have come up with some work arounds but I’m curious - how do ya’ll secure items from moving around? Let me hear your brilliant ideas!
Are you using a jig ? That’s the best way to keep items from moving…cutting a template that fits each one perfectly. It can be out of cardboard, wood…whatever. Here’s one to give you the general idea of how it works and if you do a search for ‘jigs’…you’ll find a lot more. Good luck!
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Of course, this was heavy enough the air assist fan couldn’t move it. But I still used a jig. Taped a sheet of cardboard (corrugated) to the crumb tray. I enclosed the text in a rectangle that was about the same width and length of the handle. Cut the rectangle out and then put the hammer in the opening so I could be sure it was properly aligned with where the text was supposed to be, then I ran a second cut to engrave the text.
Jigs guarantee alignment as well as keeping things from moving. Like in your case, after cutting the outline shape out of a piece of cardboard taped to the crumb tray, lay the utensil in the opening and tape it down to be extra sure it won’t move, then engrave away and everything will be lined up and stay lined up.
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If you are doing lots of utensils at a time, I would say a jig would be best. If I only had a couple to do, I would stick them down with double sided tape or duct a duct tape loop.
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There have been some posts about this before that might be helpful. Here’s one! Engraving inside bowl of wooden spoon - #3 by alicialong
When I engrave bamboo utensils I put cut-off pieces of a chopstick (less than 2", of course) into the holes in the bed and use then to hold the utensil in place. If the utensil has a hole in the handle already, it helps with positioning as well.
Your spoons should not be moving around usually. What spoons are you using? Are you going them with the crumb tray in? You might have the raised a bit higher then they need and your assist could be hitting and moving them.
I use small tiles from the hardware store in a lot of cases. I keep a couple of 2"x2", 2"x4" and 2"x6" tiles next to my GF.
Have you seen the holddown pins? I use them to create a little fence around my material and it woks great. (You have to scroll through the post to find the more current versions of the pins.)
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