First thing you want to do is prep your wood. Since I get my wood raw from the lumber yard I have to remove the bark and sand it down to a smooth finish. The lower the grit of sandpaper the more smooth your finished product will be. I start at 80 grit and work my way all the way up to 400 grit. Edges are done with a dremel and a nylon wheel.

With the ruler, you want to measure the usable space that is available to you on the sign. You will want to go from edge to edge and then top to bottom. Tip: when measuring live edge you will want to find the lowest and highest point and either make your design fit the piece or if you are doing what I am doing and putting lettering you want to measure thinnest part from top to bottom and use that as your width.

Here you can see I create a box for my dimensions of the sign that is usable. From there I put the wording on it. I chose to go with a little funny saying because we all know that one person/persons that come over and over stay their visit. Once you have the wording how you like, you want to make sure that you center the wording vertically and horizontally. so that it will be so on your board and on the space that you have designated.

Make sure that you know your starting point for the laser as this will make a whole big difference on the engrave. I chose to start from the middle so that way when I frame it, I can make sure it clears correctly on both sides. 

I engraved the sign at 100mm/s at 50% power. This gives me a dark nice burn on cedar. It took about 35 mins to burn the whole thing.

After it comes off the laser you will want to sand it again just to knock off any char around the edges of the letters. It makes everything look more professional.

Once it is sanded and ready I lacquer coat with 3 coats letting them dry in between each coat. Once finished, I like to let the sign sit for 24 hours to completely cure and DONE!