Wednesday, March 03, 2010

March 3 work in progress

Oh yeah, now we're gettin' somewhere! :-)


In other news, it hailed this afternoon. Earlier in the day it was sunny and pleasant, and then it turned super cold and little balls of ice fell from the sky. I am overwhelmed by the urge to say "What the hail!"

Here's a teaser closeup of the engraving practice that I'm doing. This part is about 3/8 of an inch tall. What might surprise you is the fact that these would not be considered particularly fine small cuts. That's actually deliberate. I set out to work kinda "big" just to get a better feel for handling gravers. Of course, when it comes to engraving, even "big" is pretty small ;-)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My guess is that it woudl be hard to see any of it if it were not inked. Right?

Katherine Plumer said...

I don't know if you mean scrimshaw or metal engraving.

Scrimshaw: yeah, basically impossible to see without ink.

Metal engraving: variable. It shows up well in the right light, if it's turned the right way, but if turned the wrong way it looks shiny and negative. Some graver geometries will make darker cuts than others, based on how the light reflects. The engraving closeup pic you see there, it's not inked yet.