Engraving question

[mjm46@bellsouth.net]

I'm working up a patchbox where the background is stippled. Is there a special stippling tool, or do I just make all those little dimples with a pointed object one at a time?

[keweenaw]

The answer is yes to both of your questions.  The problem with a stippling tool, particularly if the stipples are fairly large, is to not get a perceivable pattern.  That can also be a problem doing it with a punch so you need to think random thoughts while you're doing it.

Tom

[Jim Kibler]

Years ago I worked for a company that made glass cookware.  These are produced by pushing the softened glass in steel molds.  One day a mold maker was apparently bored while stippling the bottom of a bakng dish mold, so he stippled some sort of vulgarity in the bottom, knowing he could just fill the remaining area and get rid of it.  Well the mold went into production, dishes were made and sent to customers.  Seems the original stippled pattern was faintly visible in the finished product.  Not a good thing!

[kutter]

You can stipple the background with nothing more than a sharpened point. That takes the longest to do and is the most difficult to get to look nice and even. Blunt the point a little and you get another look to the stippling.

You can make your tool cover the area better by texturing the surface of the point.
File or turn the tool to a point, then flatten that point out a tiny bit. Onto that flat you add the textured surface you want transfered to the metal as you stipple with it.

You can cut it in with a graver very lightly,,a liner works well,,in a criss cross pattern. You can lightly tap the flattened tip on the surface of a fine file to imprint the lines of the teeth into it.
Make a 'dot' punch by turning a slight hollow in the center with the point of a flat graver. The carfully trim the edge back to give you the circle effect you need. Even the smallest of these covers background very quickly.

After the punch is textured,,heat treat it to harden it. Draw it back a very small amt.

In use, let your fingers act as a spring to recoil the punch from the surface as you rapidly tap it with the hammer in your other hand.
Covering a large area doesn't seem so daunting a task with the right tools. Keep moving your position around and the tool also to avoid a pattern to develop in the stippling. Doing it in small loops and overlapping circles seems to avoid most of that problem.

I've always made all my punches and such. But most can be bought ready made. Many engravers prefer to buy them as a time saving measure.
One engraver told me that he replaced them so often, he couldn't think about how much time he'd have to set aside to be making all of them. I told him maybe the store bought ones were junk if they were giving it up that soon.
They should last a long time even when working on steel. Unless it's an alloy that's too hard to begin with and you'll now that beforehand because you'll have battled through cutting it first.
 I've always prefered making punches. It's not that much of a task.
They used to sell a bench block called a 'dapping block' (I think that's the right name, might not be)  for making beading or dot punches.
A small hardened steel block with multiple sized imprints in it. You would simply tapped/swedge the tip of the new punch into the correct size and it formed the hollow punch for you.
That is a real time saver, but I never had the chance to get one of those. Doing them by hand isn't all bad.

added..good point about working on the inlays and being thin in spots they can deform if you're not careful.
Use a background punch that's small in size and the imprint itself has sharp edge to it. Just like a hand stamp (which it really is), the larger it is and the duller the imprint edges, the more force it takes to apply.

It doesn't take a size much bigger than taking the very tip of the point off of the sharply pointed stippling punch to work much more efficiently.
Texture that small 'flat', harden and draw and go to work.

[Acer Saccharum]

Make the punches yourself, and you won't get such a modern, store-bought look to your stippling.

WOrking on thin sheet, you may distort or bulge your patchbox. The heavier you hit, the more the metal will move. Keep an eye on it as you go. Back up the brass with a piece of steel or iron.

An alternative is to engrave a background pattern. Use a liner(which is a graver with multiple parallel teeth). Then use a single point tool to get into the nooks and crannies.

[mjm46@bellsouth.net]

I guess I'll try to make my own punch. wish me luck.

[Gaeckle]

Years ago I worked for a company that made glass cookware.  These are produced by pushing the softened glass in steel molds.  One day a mold maker was apparently bored while stippling the bottom of a bakng dish mold, so he stippled some sort of vulgarity in the bottom, knowing he could just fill the remaining area and get rid of it.  Well the mold went into production, dishes were made and sent to customers.  Seems the original stippled pattern was faintly visible in the finished product.  Not a good thing!

Now that sounds funny!

[Acer Saccharum]

I've made punches with a pattern on the tip by tapping the soft metal punch onto a file, rotate, and tap some more. It lends a 'toothy' surface to the tip. Then harden it.

[tyro]

Another thing U might try is to thin your hammer's shaft a little to give it a bit more spring and lighten your hammer for delicate work...I use gravers as small chisles, I seem to be too thumbnally challenged to do engraving..TY

[mjm46@bellsouth.net]

I made a punch using the tang of an old file, softened and trimmed down the end to a useful dimension and created a texture using a nail set, so I have a series of little pimples in the end of the point, it's not pretty but it'll do the job. Re-hardened it and it seems to work well, when I tested it I got the texture I wanted. I'll post some pictures when I do the engraving.

[kutter]

These are just a couple I grabbed off the bench. They're all made from drill rod,water hardening.
The larger criss cross matting punch I sometimes use to set gold  sheet stock. The texture has a tendency to
grab the surface and set it straight down, not letting the gold creep swedge out to the sides as a smooth punch will.
It also good for lightly texturing the surface of gold, silver or even steel engraved figures.

The rest are just small tips with different texturing faces.
Everything from circle/dot punch, liner textured, matted by tapping the tiny flat face onto a file in a couple different directions.
One is triangular shaped another pentagon (must have needed that for something special!),,nothing special on the triangle angles.
Just something to give you a point so that you can reach into the tight corners of cuts to matte the surface
and at the same time in relief work, level the background out.

A couple of these are very worn but still give perfectly good service. They will not match the same look as they printed when newly made,
as they dull with use especially on steel. Something you have to keep in mind if you have a job on particularly tough alloy, but
not necessarily something you run into working on M/Lrds.
The third from the right is a circle /dot punch that's been resharpened a few times. It makes the circle smaller each time you sharpen it. I should've removed some of
the excess mat'l from the sides of the taper to make the dot easier to see,,both during work and for the pic! Getting that blunt look to it.

They will get maganetized with use sometimes. Looks like a tiny triangle? punch (2nd from the left) has a  little steel chip hang on it. Annoying for sure.
Pass the punch or any annoyingly magnetized tool through the copper heating element/loop of an electric soldering gun as you hold the trigger back. That'll remove the problem. Once into and back out of the loop and it's good. No need for the tool to touch the hot soldering loop.

When these get dull and you figure you'll maybe re-do them,,they'll be so hard from work hardening that annealing won't soften them most times.
The best you'll get after annealing is still having to grind about 1/8" to 1/4" off the original point to get back to workable steel.
Or you can usually use the opposite end. That doesn't work harden from the hammer blows for some reason.
Use the old point end as the hammer end after grinding it off flat a bit.

[whetrock]

Kutter,
Very helpful info. Thanks. (The tip on how to deal with magnetized tools is itself worth a bundle!)
Whetrock  

[Loner]

Thanks for that post Kutter very helpful.

[mjm46@bellsouth.net]

Those are really cool Kutter, my little punch is just the tang broken off an old file, Never thougth to use drill rod, and I have some, that I got for making pins and small parts, but you use it for tools too, duh!!  For some reason I've never been able to wrap my brain around making tools. I can take a tool that was totally designed for something else and repurpose for my own use, but never actually created my own designed tools. I really admire all you craftsmen who are able to do that. I think the ability to do that can make life so much easier at times.

[kutter]

You're all very welcome. I didn't think the post would be all that informative. I just grabbed a few punches when I had the camera in hand and took a pic. Have another pic of a bunch of hand stamps of various numbers, letters and characters I've made also. I didn't post that one but maybe I will. They come about just from necessity during restoration work. Many never get used more than the one time.


Drill rod works well. Oil hardening or Water hardening,,,I don't know which is really the better for the job. A tool maker can tell you better than me.
The water hardening rod I seem to have in stock works well for the purpose I use it.
I didn't buy it on purpose,, just a shop accumulation from somewhere, so it gets used.
1/8" diameter & 3/32" are easy to use sizes. Not much to trim to make a point on the rod before designing your stippling tip.
The slender sizes aren't for extra heavy duty ball peen hammer work,,but stippling isn't that anyway.
If the small diameter cramps your fingers during use, I increase the tools diameter where you hold it with tape sometimes. That can get a little sticky as the glue softens from the heat of your hand.
Sometimes I superglue a thin piece of leather roll around them if I want to get fancy. But usually they just stay their original diameter dispite Mr. Arthur Itis

If you're not sure if the stuff you have is oil or water hardening,,of course you can guess and if like me end up doing it twice.
Or you can fill the quench can with water and then add few drops of oil to the surface. You don't need a lot,,just a skim of oil on the surface.
Quench the unkn steel through the combination of oil/water and in 99% of the time it'll harden for you. Then draw it back just ever so slightly (technical term).. I barely want a yellow color to show in the draw.

Usually I just use a cigarette lighter to warm the punch about 3/4" back from the newly hardened point.
As soon as my fingers holding the punch about the same distance to the other side of the flame  get warm, that's it,,I quench it again to stop the temper draw right there. Just water is good enough this time around.

If you draw it too far, it'll squash out and flatten the first few hits on steel. If not enough, it'll be brittle and probably crack and chip on the first few hits on steel.
After you do a couple you'll quickly learn how hot your fingers feel when the temper in the point is right.
It's all very scientific..

[tyro]

Kutter
    U might like the feel of a piece of surgical tubing around your tools, comes in several  diameters and is really tough(we used it to cover our hammer spurs to protect suit coat from being eaten by S&W target hammers) and if you don't like the feel there's a zillion or 2 other uses around the shop for it..TY   
     PS- and this is to all of you guys, Thanks for all the helpful tips and and sense of humor and comraderie you've shared. You have made a difficult time a bit easier for me. Now if you could only do something about my typing skills....
    thanx again and to all of you and yours the very best this Christmass and all the ones to follow,,,TY

[whetrock]

Ditto on Ty's comment about "sense of humor and comraderie ". It's encouraging when a thread feels like a group a friends just sitting around a pot of coffee. I really appreciate that.

Micah, we're all eager to see the tips of the stippling tool you made, and an example of the pattern. (You don't have to wait until you have a finished product!)

Kutter, please do post more pictures!

[mjm46@bellsouth.net]

I know that some would like to see the stamp I made. Well it didn't work and I didn't use it, it took too much force to impress it on the brass and I didn't want to deform it. I ended up using a center punch and a lot of repeated taps with a light hammer, I think I achieved the look I wanted perfectly, well as perfect as I could achieve.

Below are the photos of the patchbox next to the page from RCA vol I that I used as a reference. Since no dimensions were given in the RCA for this exhibit I basicly winged it and based on the way the copy I made looked next to the stock the size in the book looked very nice on my stock so I made my copy same size. The original was made with cast sheet. I made mine with .080" sheet stock, thicker that I usually use but the effect is very convincing to cast sheet.

The second pic is a little closer view. I used the typical Dickert "Hook" on the side plates as well. Hope yall like it.

[Greg S Day]

YIKES ! ! !

What would you charge an hour to do that kinda work? 

Looks good!

[docone]

Very good!
I really love the engraving. It comes to life.
I bet it didn't take that long, just a few years to do that kind of work.
Well laid out, well executed.

[whetrock]

Micah, very nice!
I'm not a master engraver or anything here. But I'll tell you that I think the randomness of the punch marks really works well on this. It helps keep the eye from getting caught on any repetitive pattern.
whet