Slate coaster gift

First etchings, first time working with slate! Thanks to @jules for the settings and @kittski for the recommendation of a light coat of cutting board oil before etching.

IMG_6487

Learnings from this project:

  1. Go ahead and save yourself some aggravation and make a jig from cardboard for the coasters in order to accurately place artwork.
  2. Yes, the darkness of color you choose for the words will make a difference in how intensely they etch. I know this should be blatantly obvious, but it was my first etching and up until now I’d only used colors to define steps and cut/score operations.
  3. You may need to adjust the “burn correction” depending on the type of wood and/or style of box. I’d just made some maple PG boxes with living hinges and with 0.09 the joints were pretty loose . . . for this one, (PG walnut) 0.07 was mallet tight.
  4. As always, the Forum is a fantastic repository of information - settings, experiences, and best practices. Thanks to everyone here for your contributions!
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Very nice gift! They look great. :sunglasses:

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So, the darker the fill on illustrator will determine the darkness of the engrave?

That was my experience (using Inkscape, but same principle).

Oh what a nice gift! :grinning:

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Can I ask what settings you used? The lighter color, the better. They look great!

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I used the settings in Jules’ post

The lighter colored ones were apple green and orange, the more opaque engraves were dark blue and purple (colors I selected in Inkscape).

.09/.07 or .009/.007 ? I find my kerfs tend to hit at .009 or so.

With this box generator I input settings for “burn” at 0.09/0.07
The default is 0.1 on this site. Maybe it differs for different generators and their calculations?

Aha. Right, I was dealing with inches in Inkscape. Cool, thanks!

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