Wood Engraving

Tonight we are engraving wood boxes for the guy that sells bezel form jewelry. They are really nice cherry and walnut boxes made by Kinney and Sons. The jewelry form sets go inside as a nice display option. Walnut is always a little tricky to engrave because it is so dark, thus the engraving doesn't show up well. We figured out a way to make it darker, and are pretty pleased with the results. Engraving on cherry still shows up better, but at least now the walnut engraving doesn't look like poop.

Granite tombstone

I've had several tombstones to do this week. I engraved a few for a local man, and today I am engraving a granite tile for my mother-in-law's cat that died. Granite is a great material to mark, especially if it is black. The white markings are an excellent contrast. It's nice to make a product that will be meaningful to someone.

Tiny Engraving

Tonight we lasered the jewelry forms for our favorite jewelry bezel form selling guy. They are the smallest things we laser. We have to cut a new template for them almost every time we etch them, because if something is at all off from the last time we used it, the etching will be noticably off. I cut a new plastic piece this evening to hold these tiny pieces, and saved myself the headache of having to redo mistakes later on.

Engraved leather motorcycle seat for a tribute bike

This is a motorcycle seat that we got to engrave for Dieber-Built Engines. It's for a tribute bike for Little John from Little John's Tattoo. George Dieber is putting together the whole bike and asked us to engrave the seat for him. The bike will be featured at the NC Tattoo Convention next weekend.

There wasn't a logo available, but we managed to find a logo online that we could trace in our graphics program and fill. That was a bit time-consuming, but a fairly fun process. After the logo was ready, we set the seat in the laser and engraved it. It came out even better than we thought it would - it looks great!

I'm going to speed up the video of the engraving a bit, then post it to you tube in the near future.

Engraved Plastic

This was one of our first products we made with the laser - an engraved plastic sign lit up with LEDs. These were pretty cool. Not really a house decoration though (except maybe in a garage), but a sleek sign to own anyway. This is our favorite - a schematic of an RX7 (one of Greg's favorite cars).

Samples

This evening we are using the laser to create samples for a major league baseball team. Hope they like them! It's pretty cool work. After this, we are done for the weekend!

Lasering large panel

Last night and today we are lasering large panels. They take awhile - a little less than an hour to engrave. There is a lot of surface area to cover with these though. The good thing with these panels taking so long is that it gives me a chance to do some other things - like linking this blog to my Facebook page! I'm finally learning about networking. I feel like Greg's mom, who is not sure what to do with all of the new ways to market and network.
Also, last night, our friends Steve and Debbie came over while we were lasering. We showed them some of our recent work, and were able to crack out a few parts also! Then we just sat around and chatted. Everyone's so busy right now... Steve's got work plus curbing to do, Debbie's got houses to show, Greg goes to work and then comes home and helps me with the laser, and I have an influx of parts to mark all of a sudden. As Steve would say, "It's all good."