All concerned future engravers, Listen to JTR and Kutter,
I still consider myself a newbie engraver. I have always wanted to learn engraving but a military career and life in general took precedence until around 2010, I found the GRS classes in Emporia, KS. I took a class using their fine equipment and an instructor that was a high end modern knife engraver. We used Gravermax, power homes, and scopes for our instruction. I learned some but nothing appropriate to colonial engraving. I bought a Gravermax but never got the knack after I spent a lot on a nice setup. Then I tried to take a hammer/chisel (HC) class from Tom Curran and unfortunately he had to cancel at the last minute due to his health. As far as I’m concerned, he was one of the last and best HC instructor and his demise was a great loss to our whole muzzleloading and engraving community. Next I took John Schipper’s class at Connery Prairie and learned more than any class to that point. John’s book is the best ever written on learning engraving but the bottom line was learning to sharpen by hand. One of the hardest thing I have ever tried to learn! Then I took an HC engraving class at the NMLRA’s Gunmakers class in Bowling Green, KY. I had all the right stuff to engrave, even a sharpening jig recommended by the great engraver Lynton McKenzie but still no standard, set and easily repeatable sharpening technique! I was so frustrated after the last class that I put my engraving tools up until recently. At the Bowling Green class time, a very well respected master gunmaker told me to forget to trying to learn HC engraving and go straight to the Lindsay system! He relayed another well known master builder that had been trying to self teach himself HC engraving and still was not accomplished after 5+ years. I have since purchased a Lindsay, the foot controlled version, to try to finally learn some good basic colonial style engraving for my builds. I’m getting ready to set my system up and start practicing soon. Another good instructor to watch his use of the Lindsay system is Bill Raby that is on Rumble and Patreon. On his Lancaster build and others viewable by all, he shows how he learned on the Lindsay and has done some really nice work. From my engraving experiences, there are 2 must points to learn. First is CONSISTENT SHARPENING, as others have already mentioned, and the second is PRACTICE! I remember John Schipper’s told us to try to diligently practice at least 15 minutes a day to learn engraving instead of sitting down and trying to engrave 8 hours a day! For sharpening, I do not think anyone has come up with a better sharpening aid that the Lindsay templates to get consistent sharpening. So the bottom line is sharpen with Lindsay and practice, practice, practice!
