Choosing a wood slab is a fairly simple process for me.  I chose a small 6" slab and lightly sanded one side.  I plan to sell it as a table or office desk decoration.  I like the “rings” to show through from the image after it's engraved so I try not to sand it too smoothly.

You can place the slab on edge and find where it sits properly or, as I did, find the orientation that will best fit your image.

i used the F1 that has a small work area so I had to design this to work in two parts.

first I engraved the image then the text.

I laid it out on one canvas then I created a second canvas just for the text incase I had to adjust the settings.

You'll notice the image came out super dark and I hate sanding the entire image so I used a really cool tool I recently bought called the Xtool Electric Engraver.  You can pinpoint specific areas that you want to lighten by using the wire brush attachment.  There are variable speeds and it's cordless so can really clean it up the way you want.

Same with the lettering.  It bit into the image a bit too much but i like the way the font came out and how it sits on the image.  To me it looks like an old pirate left this for someone to find.