I need help with what settings to use. I want to engrave so words on the wood part of a pocket knife.
Beautiful wood grain makes your knife look fantastic.
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Welcome! As long as the knife isn’t more than 1/2 inch in thickness, you should be able to lay it on the crumb tray. You can create a file in Inkscape or Illustrator, etc. of what you want to engrave. You also have the option to use the Text tool and type what you want.
Use set focus over the area you want to engrave. After it focuses, put your text where you want it. Then choose your settings. You can choose one of the proofgrade woods to start then tailor as you need it.
The problem here is you have nothing to ‘practice’ on to know exactly what settings you need. You can put masking tape on the knife and use a power of 1 and do a score of the words so you know exactly where they are-and that they are centered on the knife like you want. If they are, then you can run your regular settings. If the engrave isn’t deep enough, you can ‘rerun’ the same settings BEFORE you would move the piece-very important.
If the knife is more than 1/2 inch, you will need to remove the tray and do a search on cutting without the tray. Not hard but no need to go into it here if not needed.
Good luck and welcome!! That’s a beautiful knife!
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Good looking knife with gorgeous scales. Unfortunately, there’s no magic answer as to the engraving settings. If you have more of the wood used for the scales, you’ll definitely want to test on that before risking the finished piece!
Luckily, engrave settings are pretty forgiving-- your best bet for starting settings are the engrave settings in the Glowforge app for the Proofgrade wood closest in hardness to the scale material. For example, if the scales are walnut, you might try the PG walnut hardwood settings, but testing is absolutely necessary for the best results.
If you don’t have material that you can test on, you really have no option but make your best guess and pray.
Best of luck.
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If you can safely remove the scales, you can do an engrave test on the backside of them to dial in your settings.
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Thank you everyone. Unfortunately I’ve messed up one that I can now practice with. Also I follow a group on Facebook with a lady selling them for $9 a pop, let me know if you’re interested and I will forward the information to you.
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