i agree with Acer . one can learn to sharpen by eye , it takes time . but IMO even then , if you try to do specific angles for given work , you will see an improvment regarless of the system you use .
What weight hammer do you guy's use Captchee, do you feel the Lindsey system improved your engraving ?
oHHHHHH ya and then some .
for many years i engraved with a chase graver . but my hands after years of using a hammer for construction , they will no longer hold the graver proper .
I can tell you that a person can engrave just as fine and light with a chase graver as a push graver . IMO you have little more control and visibility with the push .
But if you take a quick trip over to the Benelli , you will see a lot of very fine work that’s done with chase gravers
But anyway . my engraving thus went from reasonable , to horrid . So I stopped engraving all together . Then I came across the GRS system .
For me it did not work . The vibration simply tore my joints in my hand up .
Sent everything back after a couple weeks . GRS was great to work with . They understood and refunded every last cent .
So I gave up again . Then last year I was looking on Steve Lindsey’s web sight and saw he was having a contest for a classic. The person with the most posts after 3 months “excluding their own “ won one of his classic ’s .
I figure I didn’t have a chance but I gave her a chance and did everything I could include beg pleading and groveling LOL .
My topic was entitled “ Thoughts “ and was an attempted to gather the when and why of the changes seen in styles of gun engraving as the art moved from Europe to the Americas.
I ended up with 22 pages of photos of different engraving plates and 214 posts opinions
http://www.engravingforum.com/showthread.php?t=1391 I won the 1000+ classic engraver and then bought the foot control and sharpening system . I use my shop compressor with regulators and small airbrush compressor to run my classic .
I even use Steves small regulator set up that uses Co2 paint ball gun tanks .
When I got the classic , to be honest my first opinion after opening the box was “what the @#$% sure glade I didn’t pay 1000 for this .
But that opinion fell to the round file on the very first cut of the first practice plate .
It cuts like a hot wire through foam , even on hard gun steels . No vibration and I no longer have any pain even after days at the bench . IMO its well worth every last dime and in fact probably more
To give you an example this last spring while at a rendezvous . Not to mention having alittle to much of the Pie that was going around I was doing alittle to much bragging about how wonderful Steves system was . And basically was told to put up or shut up LOL
So my blood temp went up and accepted .
I had one of the fellas cut a 2 inch thick round off of a piece of fire wood .
Driving a a nail through the center I made an impromptu turn table .
I then took a piece of aluminume lawn chair brace and proceeded to engrave it by the fire light . No scope , no visor , no vice
With the Lindsey classic . Using only his universal point .
Next morning this was what was on the log
If you have the basics , it will improve your engraving .
It will not give you the basics . You still have to learn those .
There is one BIG problem IMO with Steve’s system .
Its just to easy to do to much and ruin a rifle . Its also rather hard to make yourself stay with a type of engraving that’s correct for work on long rifles .
Its almost like the minute you fire it up you mind just wants to run with it .
Thus when you look up your left wondering where you lost control LOL
pS another aspect that probably doesnt fit here but if you turn the clasic down to a low setting .
using the same universal point . you can do this on horn .
this was my very first attempt at this type of worked .
seeing how will it did on horn . i emidiatly bought the Balino templates stebve offers .
i have as yet not had a chance to use them but im hoping this winter
