First attempt at engraving.

[medusa]

OK, well engraving is pushing it a bit. more like scratching metal, but it made you look!

I had a request to etch a little trefoil shape on a pebble and it was clear the photocopy resist was not holding up so I yanked it out. my problem was the etch wasn't deep enough, plus there was etching where there shouldn't have been any in the middle bits and the lines were a bit fuzzy.

So I thought maybe I could score it. I embedded it in a big lump of victory brown wax, got a new point in a scorer and set to work. Having the start of the lines was obviously helpful and made up for the fact I was basically using a big pin. I kept moving it around so I was only pushing forwards because I figured I'd have more control that way and I only managed to skid off three times. And that was because I attempted a bit of a curve.

I went over and over, getting deeper and deeper until I felt I could risk taking the whole surface down a bit.

The lines are now a bit cleaner and much deeper though as you can see from the photos there are still some pitting but to the naked eye that is not noticeable. I haven't managed to polish out the worst skid I made and the top triangle on the left is less than great, but on the whole, in the hand, it looks alright. I've shown it to a few people and they said it looked lovely but if the customer isn't happy with it, then I'll redo it because I'm not sure. That said, the fingerprint has come out really well.

things I have learned from this, is that I'd like to have a go at doing it properly (but on copper!) and also that I need to get my eyes seen to and sort some kind of magnification out as well. My eyes had a really hard time doing this and it's brought home to me that there has been a deterioration since they were last tested.