Hey yall, I’m a custom knife maker and I’ll be getting my hands on a Xtool 20W soon. I was wondering if anyone has attempted checkering wood with one of these machines… like wood stock hunting rifles?
I think this texturing would be cool on a knife handle.
I haven’t seen anyone attempt this. I anticipate a couple of challenges:
The diode laser on the D1 isn’t ideal for creating this type of textured surface, especially without scorching. CO2 lasers are better capable of creating this type of deep textured effect.
The curved surface will be a challenge. Lasering is extremely sensitive to focus and effective focal depth for something like this I imagine would be fairly narrow. Additionally, to manage the texture direction properly the handle would need to be rotated during the operation. I suspect if you could get the rotation worked out that you might be able to manage the focus within a working range. Especially for sufficiently cylindrical handles.
