Hi,
I urge you to buy Schipper's book on engraving. It will help answer many of your technique questions and shows many of the motifs found on original guns. I use a 126 degree square to cut the nicks on a nick and dot border. I use a 90 degree square to cut a heavy border line and then the wider graver to cut into that line from a right angle. As the graver dives deeper toward the line it makes the nick. Doing it that way tends to give the little bumps flat tops, which I often go back over with a small flat on edge to round off. That said, I just scanned Shumway's "Rifles in Colonial America" and found very, very few guns with nick and dot borders. You see them more where there is an English influence. There is at least one early Peter Berry with quite a bit of nick and dot on the patch box and a J P. Beck with sort of nick and dot decoration but it is not common. Most borders are simple single solid lines, dotted lines, combinations of those, and wavy lines. Little of it is very well done and rarely do you see parallel lines. Some have primitive "zig zags" made by walking the graver over the metal. You don't see many locks with much engraving except some imported with engraving. A few makers seem to have engraved the locks but rarely do you see one with much more than simple border lines and certainly not many with nick and dot borders. Round-faced English locks, Siler locks, and "Ketland" locks used on American rifles with lots of engraving and nick and dot borders all around mostly are modern fantasies. After the Rev War engraving seems to be more popular and some makers became pretty good at it. Fancier borders and nick and dots were more common but still lock plates were usually not engraved much until the 19th century. I doubt you'll find many SMRs with any engraving at all except for simple filed lines. There might be some engraving already on the imported or store-bought locks but not much else.
dave
