Thanks all, it was an interesting project.
Jonathan,
There were a few factors against the lathe as per usual its always a set of trade offs
First was I needed to bang out ~30~ asap that all look pretty much the same. I don't have quite enough confidence in my turning skills to pull that off (I'm sure I could get them turned.. but not the same) and also even not considering that it would have been a fair bit slower that ~4 cuts per on the table saw[1] which starts eating into the budget which is fairly limited (I'm mostly doing this as a favor for friends.. so trying to be gentle even though its in trade
).
Second is that one of my primary goals was to make them easily reproducible in at least general appearance by pretty much anyone in the trade. I don't expect (or even want) to be able to fulfill their ongoing requirements which will be in the 100's of handles so having a simple but distinctive pattern that can be sourced to other vendors quickly seemed advantageous. Out of the first batch of 30 less than 10 are unspoken for after a week... and they haven't ramped up distribution yet... So more complex shapes were mostly out.
I believe that future runs will likely have the letters simply laser branded on (unless they become really wed to the carved and painted look for some reason). I considered doing that but the only guy in town with a laser setup is retiring and not taking any new customers (opportunity? maybe - another fellow I know who was using him for laser lettering on a different product has been talking about getting his own setup, of course he talks about a lot of things so who knows). Shipping to Portland again starts eating into the overhead pretty quickly, if I had my own CNC it would of course be a different ball of wax. Based on the expected price point [1] I don't see inlay being doable due to the time overhead of assembly and cleanup plus the CNC time cost, although maybe its a lot easier/cheaper than I'm thinking (CNC folks feel free to educate me otherwise).
Having said that your half round back idea is intriguing as a one-off project. I think in order for it to work with the V shaped handle I'd have to think of the backside as section of a cone and build a jig to hold the wider end substantially off-center. Hmm...
[1] As a aside note of possible interest; based on my admittedly limited market research the going rate for things like this is in the $20-30 range for ~mostly square~ or stock shaped ones (by stock shape I mean turned in bulk in china or similar). I haven't been able to find solid pricing on lettering but I can't see it adding more than maybe $5-10 per unit with something around a $100+- setup charge. Custom turned ones tend to be in the $40-60 depending on the complexity. That's retail price and there is generally a 10-20% discount that kicks in in the 25-50 unit range.