Every Catan board we build is carved — that's the hex layout, the harbor ring, the tile pockets cut to a tolerance tight enough that pieces sit flush for decades. Engraving is different. It's the personalization layer: text or artwork cut into the board's border, on top of a board that's already carved. The two words aren't interchangeable, and mixing them up is the fastest way to end up confused about what you're actually ordering.
This is a look at what engraving actually involves — what people put on their boards, which files work and which don't, and how the proof process keeps a bad file from becoming a bad board. If you're deciding whether to add engraving to an order, the personalized Catan board page has pricing and the quick FAQ. This is the longer version, for people who want to know what happens between "submit a file" and "board arrives engraved."
Carved vs. Engraved, One More Time
Carved is structural. Every Heirloom Inlay board is CNC-cut from a single piece of hardwood on our Shapeoko 5 Pro — the hex pockets, the harbor slots, the border, all of it. That happens whether or not you add personalization.
Engraved is optional. It's a $50 add-on that cuts your text or artwork into the border area — the flat perimeter outside the hex layout. It never touches a tile pocket or a harbor slot, so the playing surface is identical to a non-engraved board. The engraving is CNC-carved to the same tolerance as everything else on the board, then finished with Odie's Oil along with the rest of the piece. It's not a surface decal or a laser-burned overlay sitting on top of the wood. It's cut into it, the same way the hex pockets are.
What People Actually Put on the Board
Most engraving requests fall into a handful of categories:
- Dedication lines — a single sentence, usually a gift inscription: who it's from, who it's for, sometimes why.
- Family name and date — a surname paired with a wedding date, an anniversary, or the year a family started its game-night tradition.
- Monograms and initials — two or three letters, often paired with a date on The Heir's second face.
- Logos and crests — a company mark, a family crest, a fraternity or organization symbol.
- Original artwork — a hand-drawn hex, a sketch, a simplified illustration someone designed themselves.
Text engraving is straightforward — we handle the font work on our end, so plain text in your order message is enough. Artwork is where the file matters, and where most of the proof-process work happens.
File Formats That Seat Cleanly
Vector files carve predictably. SVG, PDF, and AI files describe artwork as paths — clean lines the CNC can follow at any size without losing edge definition. If you have a logo or crest from a designer, ask for the vector source rather than a JPEG export. It's the difference between a crisp cut and a mushy one.
Raster images (JPEG, PNG, a phone photo of a hand-drawn sketch) can work, but they go through more prep. We trace the artwork into vectors before it goes anywhere near the CNC, which means fine detail in the original can get simplified or lost. A clean, high-contrast sketch traces well. A busy photo with shading and gradients does not.
Plain text needs no file at all — just tell us what it says and how you want it arranged (single line, stacked, curved along the border), and we set it in a typeface that reads well at engraving scale.
What Doesn't Seat Cleanly
A few things reliably cause trouble in the CNC pass, and we flag them before cutting rather than after:
- Fine detail at small scale. The border area is narrow. A crest with thin serifs or intricate linework that's legible on a business card can turn into a blur at two inches wide. We'll usually suggest simplifying or sizing up the design.
- Gradients and shading. A CNC bit cuts a line or it doesn't — there's no way to carve a soft gradient. Artwork built around shading needs to be flattened into solid linework first.
- Artwork that crosses into the hex layout or harbor ring. The engraving zone is the border, full stop. A design sized or positioned to spill into the playing surface gets rescaled or repositioned before it's approved.
- Extremely long text blocks. A sentence fits. A paragraph doesn't — not without shrinking the type past the point of being readable a decade from now.
None of this is disqualifying. It just means the design gets adjusted before we cut, which is exactly what the proof step is for.
How the Proof Process Works
Every engraved board goes through the same sequence:
- Order and submit. Add engraving as the personalization option at checkout, then reply to your order confirmation with your file or your text.
- Bryce reviews it personally. Every submission — text or artwork — gets looked at by a person, not run through an automated template. If a design won't seat cleanly given the hex layout and border width, that's caught here.
- A proof gets sent. You see a rendering of exactly how the engraving will sit on your specific board before anything gets cut. This is your chance to catch a typo, adjust sizing, or reposition text.
- Redraw if needed, at no charge. If your original file needs simplifying or rescaling to carve well, we do that work and send an updated proof rather than cutting something we know won't hold up.
- Cut once approved. The board goes into the build queue only after you've signed off on the proof.
Design review typically takes one to two business days on our end. Submitting your file within a day of ordering keeps the build on schedule — standard lead time is 3–4 weeks, and engraving adds about a week for the design and proof round-trip.
Where Engraving Shows Up Across the Line
Personalization is available across the Heirloom line. The Heirloom Inlay 2–4 Player board is the entry point — one face, one engraving. The Heir, our double-sided board, is where engraving gets interesting: one face carries the 2–4 player layout and the other carries the 5–6 player expansion, and you can engrave one face or both for the same flat $50. A dedication line on one side and a family name and date on the other is a common combination — two boards' worth of personalization on a single piece of wood. The standalone 5–6 player expansion board takes the same engraving option if you're not going double-sided.
Wood choice affects how engraving reads, too — the contrast between an engraved line and the surrounding grain is different on a pale species than a dark one, the same way our white oak board shows off its ray flecks differently than walnut or cherry. That's worth thinking about alongside your artwork, not just after.
The Short Version
Carved is the board. Engraved is what makes it yours. Vector files carve cleanest, plain text needs no file at all, and anything with fine detail, gradients, or a size mismatch gets caught and fixed at the proof stage — before we touch the CNC. Nothing goes into the machine until you've approved exactly what it's going to look like.
Full pricing, the engravable board lineup, and the quick-reference FAQ are on the personalized Catan board page. Every board is CNC-cut and hand-finished in our shop in Tulsa.