What do you find to be the best bit and font for 3/4 in lettering?
The 60 degree, #302, does work well for smaller letters. The 90, #301, would work but I recently saw a coaster by madhatter that had great looking small letters with a 30 degree bit. Recently Julien was working with either a 15 or 20 degree vee bit and really liked it. You just need to run a test with what you have to determine what will work best. On letters as big as a 3/4 inch, depending on the font, a #112 1/16" bit works well at pocketing lettering. I like pocketing letters because I usually paint them although vee bits work well. You could try an advanced vcarve limiting the depth but still getting the vee shape on the sides of the letters. If you have the pro it is available, if you dont have the pro you can search the forum and get a free one year pro license for cc.
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What font look are you going for? Formal? Funny? Simple?
What cutting style are you wanting? V-carve? Outline? Pocket? Raised lettering?
There are thousands of fonts, and many are available for free. You can literally google the shape or style of font you want and get hundreds of hits by using google image search. You can look for “pirate font” and get a bunch of fonts that you could see as being a pirate font..
You can do the same for any style font you want.
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I have found that the 90 degree leaves nice letters over an in tall, however, sometimes the letters will run into each other. (Kerning: The spacing between characters). Different fonts have different spacing, so you can find fonts that don’t run into each other.
I just did some .5 tall font with a 60 degree and they came out quite nice. I need to get a 30 degree to test out.
Also, in advanced V carve, you can adjust the depth of the cut, so that gives you more options.
You might want to run some test cuts with various font heights and depths. (In regular V Carve, version 514, it looks like you can adjust the depth of cut BUT YOU CAN"T. You can change the depth, but it will default back to an appropriate depth for the font height.
Bill
Depends on the design. Square milled letters vs relief letters, vs V-Carved, flat bottom v-carved, etc. all use different cutters…so…???
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60 or even 30 degree V is best for small-ish letters imo (in an “Advanced V carve” toolpath)
the actual font is mostly taste, but I find that “super thin” fonts don’t quite end up as nice (carving very thin lines causes small variations i the thickness of wood to amplify)
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I like 30° bits for small letters. If you use light wood the depth of the letters will shade them enough to make them readable and stand out against the background, without requiring any additional colors. Just apply oil.
How are you guys determining the total depth to cut for lettering using the V cutters?
@Antimullet the depth is automatically calculated by fitting the v-bit geometry between the two contours. If you have a wide shape, like a big square or something then the depth setting comes into play. At that point it’s up to your taste and the limitations of your bit.
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With V-Carving, the depth of the cut is based on the angle of the cutter and the width of the area being cut. A narrow angle bit results in a deeper cut for a given width.
You can however, set a maximum depth of cut and then use a clearing operation with a straight cutter to save time.
Ok so technically, choose the bit and don’t mess with any depth and the software calculates depth on its own. If I’m understanding this correctly? Or use your method as an option.
Yes. For V-Carving you don’t set the cutting depth. The program calculates it for you.
I use Vectric V-Carve, and that software has a clearing operation if you want to use it. I am not sure if Carbide Create has the same feature since I don’t use it.
There is a pocketing option in carbide create under Advanced V-carve. Can’t remember if it’s in Pro only or regular as well. It always runs before the vcarving operation.
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you do want to use “Advanced Vcarve” if you have bitsetter… that way you can make the “inside” of the fat side of letters a flat bottom… while the edges of the letters will still be done with vcarving (so sharp corners etc).
A “pure V carve” will go as deep as it needs to, even if that is deeper than the thickness of your stock 
(and nothing good comes out of that… trust me)
especially if you use 30 degree bits you want to do this, since a pure vcarve with those can go very deep very quickly (the walls will be STEEP)
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