For Christmas, I wanted to put some of my new skills to good use and make my family some customized Christmas Presents. My dad had wanted a new cutting board since the one he liked just split in half, so I found a nice wooden one from HomeGoods and also found a neat little whisky barrel.

When I bought them I immediately had designs in mind of what I wanted to laser engrave into them. For the cutting board, I wanted to put text on the top and bottom of it, right inside the juice groove, and a Merry Christmas message on the back. For the whiskey barrel, I wanted to engrave “Kathryn’s Whiskey Barrel” on the sides so it could be functional and a nice decoration.

To engrave the barrel, I started by putting a Merry Christmas message on the back side, this one was easy since it was flat. For the sides, I figured it would be best if I engraved them line by line so that the words would not end up warped from being engraved onto the curved barrel. While doing this I found out that the laser cutter has a nice feature that shows a little crosshair on the program layout screen to show where the laser head is positioned at that moment. That feature was incredibly useful when positioning the words so that I could make sure I would not engrave them over top of each other or too far apart.

After engraving the barrel, the cutting board was a piece of cake since it was completely flat. I just had to position the phrases my sister came up with in the places that I measured and check that was where I wanted it in the software with the laser head crosshair.