Quick question...

[Wilbur Harris]

I'm making a trophy, or better said, attempting to make a trophy using a cutting board. I plan to inlay the lettering and logo using the reverse engraving method that George Perzel wrote about. My question is - Does end grain wood engrave any differently concerning the depth?

[David Somers]

Good morning Wilbur!

I assume when you say Does end grain wood engrave any differently concerning the depth you are looking for a comparison with side grain?

I am afraid I have never tried cutting or engraving end grain. I use end grain a lot in my woodturning and it does indeed turn quite differently than the same wood turned side grain. But in terms of engraving? I am not sure.

I am guessing with my answer here and look forward to hearing from someone with a clue. <grin> But my guess is that since this is wood in or from a cutting board that it is a tight grain wood like Maple or Cherry? Cutting boards, especially ones that are made with the end grain exposed, tend not to be made with open grained woods like Ash and Oak. They may be nice hard woods but the open grain encourages tiny food deposits to accumulate in the end grain and can be difficult to clean adequately. So if the wood is maple or cherry, or something similarly tight grained I would not think end or side grain would make that much difference to the engraving process? Again. I am guessing so take this with a really big grain of salt!

[Wilbur Harris]

Thanks David! I've got two of them which gives me 4 tries so I'll just have at it! Nothing ventured...nothing gained...

[Brian Lamb]

I have engraved quite a bit of end grain and it doesn't seem to cut much differently than "regular" grain. I will say that the bottom of the engraved area tends to be a bit rougher... a little bit more high-low type of thing. Maybe you hit a dense fiber vs. a soft fiber type of thing and get more variance in depth.

[David Somers]

Brian, That would make sense given each "grain" is like a straw. The laser might be engraving on the tube walls of the straw, or it might be engraving in the hollow of the straw and the effect would far more pronounced in a course or more open grained wood like Oak.

Wilber....you might just sacrifice one and do a test pattern of engraving on it. That way you get a slug of tests in one piece. Basically come up with a grid where the rows are power levels and the columns are speeds. Now you can see a bunch of engravings and choose the one that gives you the best results. Save it as well since you would now have a nice grid of the efffects of changes. You might want to use this again but maybe have a deeper or darker engraving. Refer to this and you can see what settings give you the variation you want.

[Mike Null]

Just an opinion as I haven't recorded any of my results but I've done a number of slabs cut out of a log. My thought is that they were a tad bit softer and engraved deeper with the same power.