Coloring the un-engraved area of a project

[Michael Hunter]

I did a similar job once on oak.
Just sprayed it all over with gold "Plastikote" paint (acrylic based paint in a rattle can) and then engraved it.
The lettering was too small to make masking a sensible option, so I just cleaned the smoke marks off with spray furniture polish afterwards.

[Mike Null]

I have used gold foil for that kind of work.

[Tony Lenkic]

+1 on Mike's idea.

Use foil from Laserbits. Apply foil, cut text outline and engrave the rest right through the foil.

[Kev Williams]

As long as the paint's cured decently, you don't need to mask the paint before engraving. Smear a little wax on first (I use car wax), that helps keep the guck from sticking.

What I've found that really helps with engraving wood (and leather) is to put a fan in the machine to blow the smoke away as it's engraving. Not the same as air assist, which blows down onto the wood with some force making the soot stick worse. A fan moves the smoke before it has a chance to glom onto the wood or leather. There is a downside, which is the cabinet will fill with smoke and the blower will have a hard time evacuating it all. The fix is to pause the machine if the cabinet gets choked up to let the blower suck it out, then resume. The time and frustration saved from not having near the mess to clean afterwards is much greater than the time spent pausing to let the blower remove the smoke...

[daniel hernandez]

Thanks to everyone, I"ll be going with the foil...but will try some paint things in the future just to see results.

[Klaus Madsen]

Sorry maybe I don't understand this right, but for me, I would just color the whole thing before engraving, and that it. Or is there something I misunderstood???