Hi Everyone

Well here is my latest piece of the hammer gun. One fence completed and one more to go. The bird is our native falcon or sparrow-hawk. The Maori name for it is Karearea. (Pronounced car-re-re) The fern is our national emblem and can be found all over the country particularly in wet areas like the west coast.

The deep relief engraving is a lot of fun to do. The learning curve on the tools is pretty steep but well worth the effort. As you can see by the photos I’ve still got a lot of learning ahead of me!!!

One huge lesson I learnt was there are no shortcuts……….By that I mean I have to overcome my natural lazy instinct and when it’s time to change tools…then change tools…don’t take a large flat and think “she’ll be right mate” and try and do a small flat job with it. Even if it does mean grabbing another graver blank or piece of drill rod and spending half an hour making the exact tool you need!!!!

All the main cuts were done, then flats used to bevel and round edges and then half rounds used to create channels. These were softened over with various textured round punches made out of 1/8th drill rod then heat treated. Another tool that was extremely useful was a bevelling punch made the same way. Most of the edges I tried burnishing to round off a bit better. Ron Smiths Reno 2006 DVD gives a really good insight into shaping punches for this sort of work. Very similar to leatherwork in some ways.

To the human eye it looks OK but magnified under the microscope it looks as rough as guts. You can’t help but admire the skill of those European engravers that only use optivisor type magnifiers and yet their work looks perfect.

As usual, your thought and any comments you have on methods and ways to improve anything for the future are always appreciated. That’s how I learn.

Best regards
Andrew Biggs


Andrew Biggs
10/18/2006 2:39:42 AM

Andrew Biggs
10/18/2006 2:40:20 AM

Andrew Biggs
10/18/2006 2:40:57 AM

Andrew Biggs
10/18/2006 2:41:28 AM

Looking good Andrew....One think I learned a long time ago is never throw away any old punched or gravers.they an always be reshaped and made into something else over and over again. Not sure if this is just being naturally "cheap" or "frugal"

Martin Rabeno
10/18/2006 9:12:13 AM

Andrew, I like your design ideas. Different yet tasteful and nicely done. I hope you will be able to bring these parts to Reno so I can look at the real item. By the way, Europeans are not the only ones that just use an Optivisor for magnification. Regards.

Sam Welch
10/18/2006 8:19:21 PM

I prefer to use my optivisor when I do my banknote scenes also. While I have a microscope which I really like for fine shading and lettering.I just prefer the freedom of movement and the field of vision I get with my optivisor. I think what is important is not the detail you have in your scenes but the detail people think they see in your scenes.
What animal are you putting on the other bolster?

Martin Rabeno
10/18/2006 9:42:18 PM

Hi Marty and Sam

Thanks for that. Hopefully I'll have the action at Reno. It may even be finished by then. All I have to do is make sure all the customs declaration forms are filled in correctley. I can see the headlines now "Osama Bin Biggs arrested at airport with fully engraved shotgun action".

I tried the optivisor and I can see some definate advantages with it as you mentioned Marty. Trouble is I still just couldn't see what I was doing properley and ended up with a real dog's breakfast on my practice plates which is a real bummer. I use my microscope mainly on it's lowest magnification (about 10 I think) and only zoom right in for tricky areas.

My optivisor is one of those cheap hobby ones and I believe that you can get a lot better quality and magnification but I would want to try them first.

Maybe I should take a leaf out of Mark Smiths book and strap some binoculars to my head :-)

Cheers
Andrew

Andrew Biggs
10/19/2006 12:15:26 AM

On the other side I'll be carving a Kea (Key-ah)which is a native NZ high country/alpine parrot. They're cool birds but very destructive as many a skier has found out when returning to their car after a days skiing, only to find that the only rubber left on their cars is the tyres.

Cheers
Andrew

Andrew Biggs
10/19/2006 12:21:35 AM

To my friend Andrew Biggs.
Excellent work. Thank you for posting your photos--I love to see your progress. You knew you were going to catch crap from the optiviser comment. I've enjoyed using an optiviser for many years. I tried to use a binocular microscope a couple of years ago, it felt like I had straped a pair of binoculars on and my arms were too short. Thanks again for posting your photos.

Mark Smith
10/20/2006 4:50:14 PM