The Accurate Reloading Forums THE ACCURATE RELOADING.COM FORUMS Guns, Politics, Gunsmithing & Reloading Engraving Wanting to get into engraving?Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
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I bought the hand engraver set from lindsay. Does enyone have a nice used vice for sale. | |||
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I carved my initials on my Snoopy lunch box in the third grade, does that count? Mike Legistine actu quod scripsi? Never under estimate the internet community's ability to reply to your post with their personal rant about their tangentially related, single occurrence issue.  What I have learned on AR, since 2001: 1. The proper answer to: Where is the best place in town to get a steak dinner? is…You should go to Mel's Diner and get the fried chicken. 2. Big game animals can tell the difference between .015 of an inch in diameter, 15 grains of bullet weight, and 150 fps. 3. There is a difference in the performance of two identical projectiles launched at the same velocity if they came from different cartridges. 4. While a double rifle is the perfect DGR, every 375HH bolt gun needs to be modified to carry at least 5 down. 5. While a floor plate and detachable box magazine both use a mechanical latch, only the floor plate latch is reliable. Disregard the fact that every modern military rifle uses a detachable box magazine. 6. The Remington 700 is unreliable regardless of the fact it is the basis of the USMC M40 sniper rifle for 40+ years with no changes to the receiver or extractor and is the choice of more military and law enforcement sniper units than any other rifle. 7. PF actions are not suitable for a DGR and it is irrelevant that the M1, M14, M16, & AK47 which were designed for hunting men that can shoot back are all PF actions. 8. 95 deg F in Africa is different than 95 deg F in TX or CA and that is why you must worry about ammunition temperature in Africa (even though most safaris take place in winter) but not in TX or in CA. 9. The size of a ding in a gun's finish doesn't matter, what matters is whether it’s a safe ding or not. 10. 1 in a row is a trend, 2 in a row is statistically significant, and 3 in a row is an irrefutable fact. 11. Never buy a WSM or RCM cartridge for a safari rifle or your go to rifle in the USA because if they lose your ammo you can't find replacement ammo but don't worry 280 Rem, 338-06, 35 Whelen, and all Weatherby cartridges abound in Africa and back country stores. 12. A well hit animal can run 75 yds. in the open and suddenly drop with no initial blood trail, but the one I shot from 200 yds. away that ran 10 yds. and disappeared into a thicket and was not found was lost because the bullet penciled thru. I am 100% certain of this even though I have no physical evidence. 13. A 300 Win Mag is a 500 yard elk cartridge but a 308 Win is not a 300 yard elk cartridge even though the same bullet is travelling at the same velocity at those respective distances. | |||
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I will keep an eye out for one. Good luck at your progress. I can't seem to get doing minions stage. I can do those fair. | |||
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Some suggestions for you: ebay - you will find both used quality vises and also Chinese knock-offs. If you don't mind tearing them apart and replacing the bearings the Chinese knock-offs will get you started. Of course you may end up replacing the bearing in any used engraver block that you buy depending on how used it is and how well maintained it was. http://www.engraverscafe.com/forum.php - they have a classifieds section, just have to watch and wait. http://www.engravingforum.com/ - you can ask here, someone might have one to get rid of. Then there is various groups on Facebook: engravers tools for sale or trade Jewelry tool garage sale Engraving Bench - Hand Engraving Tips and a bunch of others And if you want to get going sooner while you wait for that perfect deal to come along have you thought about making a Bowling Ball Vise? You can usually get the ball for free from your local bowling alley, you can buy a drill press vise for around $10.00 w/ free shipping form amazon and the rest is a few bolts & nuts, some scrap plywood, some rollers and a bit of your time and elbow grease. I started out on a bowling ball vise and they work very well. Don't think that they are some hack job either because some of the finest engravers in the last 50 years have used bowling ball vises and produced amazing work. Here is just one example of how is can be done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJYWMXNcwOY More examples: https://www.google.com/search?...ygC&biw=1366&bih=654 Hope that helps. | |||
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Thanks for the information | |||
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Found a nice ball vise locally going to pick up tomorrow | |||
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Make sure it is big enough. I bought one on ebay years ago and I didn't know anything and it was for Jewlery. Doesn't do any good for gunsmithing. An ex-girlfriend of mine went to engraving school in Ferlach, Austria and here in Germany at Suhl. She was a good artist to begin with, she said unless you just want to do scroll you have to be a good artist. If not the frustration from making stick carachters will piss you off enough that you'll eventually give it up. | |||
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You don't have to be an artist to engrave. Most of engraving has to do with applying traditional geometric designs .. scroll, various styles of border, and maybe some blackleaf. When it comes to "game scenes" and other artistic depictions, you just find an image online that works for you and use one of the many techniques to resize and transfer the image onto your work piece. There is the Epson printer trick, the Xerox trick, the rubbing, and the pantograph to name a few. Once that's done you just trace the lines and add a bit of detail. The one area where a little study is useful is shading. Strangely, one of the more difficult things to learn is to engrave a straight line. Sharpening gravers is annoying but can be avoided by annealing the part before cutting where possible. Most if it has to go back through color case anyway. If you have to engrave something hard, then use a carbide engraver. Putting a very slight rounded radius on your cutting edge helps a lot, as does polishing the facets of the graver. It does help to have a tutor, even 30 minutes a week helps a lot. Thanks, Bob Evans! Russ Gould - Whitworth Arms LLC BigfiveHQ.com, Large Calibers and African Safaris Doublegunhq.com, Fine English, American and German Double Rifles and Shotguns VH2Q.com, Varmint Rifles and Gear | |||
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Russ - with respect, apart from your comments regarding the use of carbide, this post is full of miss-information. If you are not an artist, you will not 'see' that your composition lacks balance. If you do not know the rules of scroll, you will produce rubbish that may get plaudits from your Mom, but is still poor design. If you are not an artist, sure you can plagiarize others work from the internet, but the life and 'flow' that exemplifies good hand engraving will be missing from your pieces, and you will always produce sub-par engraving - the good news is, you will not see this for yourself. You want to scratch metal - go ahead. You want to be an engraver - first be an artist, for without the ability to design and compose, you can never move forward. IMHO  Just taking my rifle for a walk!........ | |||
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I do agree that it takes an artists skill + eye to do a proper job. My eldest son is one. Even as a child he was drawing better than I ever could;by his teens was doing caracatures that were so real they were spooky. Then he got into doing tattoos for friends,also top notch. So I bought him an NGraver from Brownell's + he does great work but he has the artists attitude;it's so easy so everyone can do it so he just gives stuff away.He's 40 now so not much I say can change his mind.Pity;he truly is a REAL artist. Never mistake motion for action. | |||
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contact Jim Downing in Springfield, Mo he has classes in engraving and does a lot of guns | |||
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Cheers, seen it time and time again. Someone wants to get into engraving either by skill or natural talent they are not an artist, and their work shows it. I took art for all 4 years of highschool. My senior year there was one kid that could do anything. The art teacher told him regularly if he wanted an art scholarship he would get him one. Not sure whatever happened to him, as he had to repeat 12th grade, and I joined the military for 20 years never to return. He was the only kid looking back that had talent. My parents still have some of the crap I produced as a senior hanging in their basement. My paintings are flat. | |||
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Buy the book by John Schippers "Engraving Historic Firearms". Its not cheap ($130 on Amazon) but worth every penny if you want to learn how to do it. I took a week long engraving class from Mr. Schippers about a dozen years ago and was cutting nice scrolls and patterns by the end of the week using a chisel and hammer. John will tell you that engraving is a craft that most anyone can master. It was considered a trade in England like locksmith or stockmaker. I will also tell you you do not need to be able to draw anything. WIth computers there are simple or complex engraving designs that can be scaled up or down, printed on an inkjet printer and transferred to the workpiece with a little acetone. Have done it a lot myself. Its an acquired skill and requires muscle memory and feel to improve. Like any hand skill. If you don't practice cutting lines and scrolls you will not be good at it. But it does not require a high level of talent or artistic capacity to do well. Not a lot of people do it so people think otherwise. | |||
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John told us a story about the difference between craftsmanship and talent. He said the first trade he learned was to be a blacksmith. The first thing he learned from the smith who taught him was how to make a perfect 2" iron ring. The smith showed him how to do it once and then told him he needed him to make 500 of those rings. John said it took him all morning to make one and by the end of the first day he had made 5 total. He showed them to the smith who gave him advice on how to improve and they next day he made 20.... Better but still not up to standard. By the end of two weeks he could knock out over a hundred a day and they were as good as the one's the blacksmith made. But it took him 500 attempts to get it right. Once he learned how to do it he could do it in his sleep. Some would say they were works of art. But John said they were the result of practiced hands. And he said engraving was really no different. | |||
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The Accurate Reloading Forums THE ACCURATE RELOADING.COM FORUMS Guns, Politics, Gunsmithing & Reloading Engraving Wanting to get into engraving?
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