How laser engraved cutting boards are made
Engraved cutting board process:
There’s nothing like a recipe from mom or grandma (or from anyone special in your life) can take you back to childhood. Most of us have special memories that come back when we taste or even smell that special dish being prepared. A lot of the time the food is just a gateway to help us remember someone. For me, it’s a pie that my grandma made mainly around Thanksgiving and Christmas. While we don’t have a way to keep the taste or smell forever, we can help you to preserve the recipe in a way that is very popular with our customers, friends and family.
We have two options that we offer for engraving. CM Customs can either type out the recipe or we can engrave a high quality image after we convert it and clean it up.
So what exactly does that mean? If you have a recipe card, note card, piece of paper or whatever someone wrote the recipe down on, we can use an image of it to engrave your loved ones handwriting onto the surface of your choosing. Pretty cool, right?
What we need from you is the best image that you can capture. If you’re using a scanner that’s ideal because you don’t have shadows and you’re directly over the paper. But smartphone pictures work just fine as well. Just be aware that severe shadows can be a problem. Also, if you take the photo at an angle and the text isn’t straight in your picture it may not be straight when it’s engraved. But we do everything we can to manipulate the image and make it look great.
After the order is placed and we have your image file uploaded or emailed to us we create the art to be a tracing of the handwriting. Once everything is cleaned up and looks great you will have a layout emailed to you. We take this extra step to ensure that everything is just as you want it. Because the last thing we want is for you to not love your order.
After you approve the layout we move onto engraving. This is where the laser engraving machine is used. The image file is sent to the laser, the piece to be engraved is positioned properly inside of the machine and then the laser etches the piece. What happens during this process is the material is literally burned away and precisely engraved into the surface of the piece. This is the cool part that everyone enjoys the most!
Lastly, once the laser engraving is completed it’s time to clean up. After the engraved piece sits for a short period of time any residue is cleaned off the surface of the board. This way you’re going to get a clean cutting board that doesn’t have more than a minimal amount of residue left on it. (We do our best to completely clean them, but sometimes tiny amounts may get missed). Now that sawtooth hanger gets put on the back of the board and it’s ready to be shipped out.
Even though this sounds like a lot of steps, the entire process moves along fairly quickly. Please see our lead time page for the current amount of time that this is taking.
How to display your cutting board
Now you may be wondering how to display the beautifully engraved recipe cutting board. There are a few different ways that you can hang it.
- The classic nail in the wall. Simply drive a small nail right where you want and hang the board. It only weighs one pound so a small nail will do.
- Command strips. This way you don’t have to put any nails in your wall and you don’t have to patch holes if you move it later on. Here is a size that should work great.
- Display on an easel. This will look great on a shelf on inside of a hutch with something like this to hold it.
Things to note about laser engraved wood products.
We share this in an effort to be completely up front with you. We believe in full disclosure in all of our dealings. The only way to build trust is by being open and that’s what we strive for.
- With any wood products you can have variation in color in grain pattern. However, whatever you receive won’t vary more than slightly from what is pictured.
- The color of the engraved portions can vary, sometimes even on a single piece of wood. Since the amount of wood sap affects the color of the laser burn, there can be some pieces that are lighter or darker. But, we never ship anything that doesn’t look great.
I hope that this has helped you to understand the process better and to gain an appreciation for the care that goes into your order. We look forward to working with you to preserve family memories. If you have any other questions please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’ll do our best to answer your questions and concerns fully.
Now that you have all of the information that you need here’s the link to order your custom engraved cutting board today.