David, first of all welcome to the forum and congratulations on your inhertiance. I'll let someone else chime in on the cut path details, but there is one thing I ALWAYS do when ever there is a cut path involved and that is I use a jig or carrier. I also ALWAYS use tape on the bottom for the brass roller, the price of tape vers... the cost of a tool is a no brainer. Since the machine has been sitting around you may want to be sure the flex shaft is lubbed but not over lubbed. There are plenty of threads on the flex shaft so if you do a search you will find them, be sure to use "quotes" around your search word(s). Good luck and enjoy.
CarverJerry
ver. 1.188 Win 7- 64b with 6 GB ram @ 2.8Ghz and dual 1Tb hard drives. Rock Chuck & Ringneck vacuum system hooked up to a Harbor Freight large vacuum. Center line text, conforming vectors.