Engraving Bibles or other products means a commitment of money, personnel and time. Selecting a machine to purchase is perhaps the easiest part of this decision. There are several machines that do a great job in imprinting and are reasonably priced.

But, just having an engraver does not guarantee your staff will do a great job. Engraving takes patience and practice. There will be plenty of mistakes, and your staff will need lots of encouragement before they feel comfortable providing this service.

You and your staff must understand engraving techniques and parameters. Due to the large variety of available Bibles, engraving designer bindings needs to be studied. Some cannot be engraved because they are synthetic and the material will melt when heated. Others have a nap or textures that do not adhere to the heating element, and the type will not lay flat. And then there are a few Bibles that should never be engraved, such as calfskin leather, which is too soft for the heat of imprinting. It burns and is ruined.

You must decide whether or not to charge for engraving. Some stores provide engraving as a free service with the purchase of a Bible. Others charge a nominal fee that covers the cost of machine use, foil and time. Most stores charge to engrave Bibles purchased from other stores.

You will need a good process for getting the pertinent information from an engraving customer, and you will need to decide how many letters the customer can have engraved on the Bible. Most machines can handle a set number of characters, so be sure to decide on what your limit will be, and have your staff monitor orders.

Also, if you give customers a choice of color, be sure they are advised of the general rule of thumb-usually the same color of foil is used as the color of the edging on the pages of the Bible. Thus, a blue Bible with silver edges would usually be engraved using silver foil.

You may need to consider offering the choice of embossing instead of engraving. In recent years the new styles of Bibles have led to using an embossed look instead of an engraved method.

Engraving is an image stamped with ink under tremendous pressure, and embossing is an image stamped without ink. Embossing is especially used on youth and Duo-Tone Bibles. A good way to know which is appropriate is to use whatever method the publisher has used on the spine.

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