Two custom name necklaces, on the same linen cloth, in the same window light, with the same name in the same script. They photograph almost identically. One costs about 40% more, and the seller's page repeats the phrase "hand-engraved" the way a restaurant repeats the word "artisanal."
So what is the extra money actually buying? Not a nicer name, and not a better chain. The difference is a manufacturing decision made before anyone saw your order: whether the letters are cut through the piece or cut into it. That single choice determines how thin your letters are allowed to get, what happens to the dot on a lowercase "i", and whether the edges still feel smooth in year four.
Here is what each process really does, plus the four checks you can run on your own name before you pay anyone anything.
Two ways to put a name on a piece
Cut through. A focused beam traces the outline of each letter and removes the material around it, so the letters survive as free-standing shapes. The kerf — the width of material the beam itself takes away — runs about 0.1 to 0.25 mm (0.004 to 0.010 in), roughly the width of a human hair. That is exactly why cut lettering can be spaced as close as 0.4 mm (0.016 in) and still stay separate.
Cut into. A hand graver or a rotary tool lifts material out of the surface without going through it. For a name you can actually read at arm's length, that groove is usually 0.3 to 0.5 mm deep (0.012 to 0.020 in). The letter is not a shape at all — it is a shadow.
| Cut through | Cut into (engraved) | |
|---|---|---|
| How the letter reads | Silhouette — the letter is a solid shape | Shadow — the letter is a groove in a solid surface |
| Working precision | Kerf 0.1–0.25 mm; letters can sit 0.4 mm apart | Tip 0.2–0.5 mm; curves can go finer, spacing cannot |
| Time on a five-letter name | Minutes, roughly the same minutes for one piece or fifty | A few characters per hour, per piece |
| Where the cost sits | Setup files and cutting time | Hours of hand work |
| If the design is wrong | Unrecoverable — the material is gone | Sometimes recoverable — a shallow groove can be sanded flat and re-cut |
| What fails first | Strokes thinner than about 0.5 mm start to flex | Long shallow curves lose contrast as they fill in |
There is a second difference that matters more than the price gap: who is making the decisions. With cut-through work, most of the thinking happens once, in the file, before cutting starts. With hand engraving, the tool pressure, the depth, and the width of every stroke is a judgement call made by a person, letter by letter. That is why two hand-engraved pieces with the same name never look identical, and why a workshop's second piece of the same name is usually better than its first.
The four names that break
You do not need to know anything about manufacturing to spot a design that will fail. You only need to look at your own name.
1. The lone dot. Lowercase i and j have a dot that is physically separate from the rest of the letter. In cut-through work, a floating dot has to be held by something — usually a thin bar behind the script, or a joined script where the dot flows out of the previous letter's exit stroke. If the preview shows a free-floating dot, ask what holds it in place.
2. Enclosed spaces. The hole in a, o, e, and g is a closed loop. A cut-out loop has to be anchored to the piece, or it drops out as a separate ring on the workshop floor. This is why joined script survives cutting far better than widely spaced block letters.
3. Tall letters and hanging letters together. Bridget, Stephanie, Jorgensen. If the name has both tall letters (b, d, h, k, l, t) and hanging letters (g, j, p, q, y), the piece needs roughly 1.6 times the vertical room of a name made only of short lowercase letters. At a 12 mm letter height, plan on close to 20 mm of total finished height, not 12.
4. Length that outgrows the plate. In a joined script at 12 mm (0.47 in) letter height, an average lowercase letter advances about 8 to 10 mm (0.31 to 0.39 in) across the piece. So:
| Letters in the name | Approximate span | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| 3–4 | 3.5–4 cm (1.4–1.6 in) | Comfortable at full letter size |
| 5–7 | 4.5–6.5 cm (1.8–2.6 in) | The most common, most predictable range |
| 8–10 | 7–9 cm (2.8–3.5 in) | Needs a wider piece, or the letters shrink |
| 11+ | 9 cm+ (3.5 in+) | Ask for the real total width in centimetres before you order |
When a workshop keeps the piece width fixed and the name keeps growing, something has to give: either the letter height shrinks, or the strokes thin out. Below roughly 0.5 mm of stroke width, a cut-through letter stops holding a crisp polish and starts to flex under a thumb. That is the real failure mode behind "it looked better on the website."
The edge nobody photographs
Look at the edge of a cut-through piece two ways: run a fingernail along it, then look at the back.
A freshly cut edge comes off the machine with a fine, slightly grainy micro-edge on the underside. It has to be tumbled and polished away, and the good ones are finished on both faces. A piece with a mirror front and an untouched back is a semi-finished product being sold as a finished one.
Engraved grooves have their own version of the same problem. A groove with a burred, chewed edge traps hand cream and soap, and it will look grey inside within a month no matter how often you clean it. The fix is a burnished edge on the groove, which is a slow hand step — and it is one of the first steps that gets skipped when a price looks suspiciously low.
How to choose in under a minute
- Count the letters. Five or fewer: either process works, pick by budget. Eight or more: go cut-through, and ask what the total width will be in centimetres.
- Write the name in lowercase and circle every dot, plus every letter with a hole in it. If you circled anything, ask how it stays attached.
- Check for a mix of tall and hanging letters. If you have both, ask how tall the finished piece will be — not how tall the letters are.
- Ask what happens to the edges, front and back. "Both faces polished" is an answer. Silence is also an answer.
- Look at the preview at arm's length, the distance everyone else will see it from. If you have to lean in to read it, a stranger will read it as a scratch.
What actually decides the piece
None of this is a verdict on which process is better. It is about matching the process to the name in front of you. A four-letter name in a bold script is almost impossible to get wrong. An eleven-letter name with two dots and a hanging letter is a design problem, and the workshop that tells you so before taking your money is the one that will send you something you are still wearing years later.
You can type your own name into the design preview at / and watch how the letter spacing changes as the name gets longer — it is the fastest way to find out that "Alexandra" does not fit the way you pictured it. More walk-throughs on how a name becomes a finished piece are collected at /blog, including the chain-length guide that explains where each length actually sits on the body.
And if the name has an accent, an apostrophe, a space, or a letter you have never seen on a necklace before, ask before you order at /contact. One two-line question costs less than one remake — and it is the only part of this process you can still control after the file has been cut.