Gilded Lettering practice

Gold lettering onto silver really sparkles to the eye, yet simple photography is not good at all in capturing it. I need to get serious about a light box. No excuses, as Sam Welch has already shown me how to make a good one from a surplus bed sheet.

A good local man passed away, his widow donated his lathe to the local wood turners. Plaque, 2 inches by 3, will be mounted on his lathe.

Properly trained engravers will see immediately, that I did not change gravers to do my hairlines nice and thin, as gilding then appears, to the eye, to fade in these very thin lines, so I engraved all with a flat, it gives slightly wider hairlines that do appear to show gold better.

Is that cheating?

Rod

Actually it isn't a flat graver, it is a double sided square!!!! and no, you didn't cheat.

I like the plaque! Why? Simply, because you can read it! Script can contain lines so thin, the stuff is almost unreadable. The oblique penman crowd does exquisite work, but I've seen examples that look like someone erased a portion of the work. Your plaque connects all letters properly, in readable fashion. After all, we all want to read what is engraved, right? Looks like good spacing and layout. Others may differ, but that's my feeling on the matter.

Hi, nice job all around, also a very nice sentiment.

scott99

No cheating - easy reading!

Beautiful work, Rod! Your gilding technique is so nice.

It's not uncommon to cut the hairlines with a flat as well. As you have shown, it's quite doable in the hands of a capable engraver.

looks great.
this is where the saying "dot your i's and cross your t's" comes in.
see it yet?

Beautiful! Is this inlay, or what??? for the gold?

Thank you all for your encouragement, and thank you for 'donating' your eagle eye, truehand! I had a number of people spell check, and we missed the uncrossed 't'. Yet another example of the mind seeing what it wants to see, rather than what is there. I will correct the omission, and buy you a coffee when I get back up to Canada!

Sam, your lettering course has been one of the very best bargain tutorials, especially as we can all down load it so easily. There is no place to hide when engraving lettering ( or the human face), practicing, with your Video on my bench, spills over into all aspects of general engraving, thank you.

Cloudy, I know you would enjoy adding gilding to your list of skills, and I can email my article, if you have not already read it in the Engraver. The effect may be seen on artifacts over the millennium, my own approach is to simply 24 k gold plate the whole piece then micro-sand the top surface, to bring back the silver in a few minutes, the gold in the cuts is safely out of reach of the sand paper up top. It will fail unless the silver is lapped super flat before starting, but that only takes about 15 minutes. Other precautions, such as avoiding any rounding over of the edges of engraving cuts, all are described in the article.

Rod

Great lettering/gilding work and a nice tribute too.
I'm starting to wonder, if we could pick out our own "memorial placard", what would we want it to say?
Maybe someone could start a new thread with that topic.

looks like a keeper to me. it's not the tool you use. the telling thing is how the result looks. my first 3 or 4 years in this endeavor, the flat was the only graver i could get acceptable results with. i gravitate this day to the flat; for reasons, i think, is merely due to the fact i like the way it cuts along with the way it feels when using it.

Beautiful lettering job!
I really like the gilded gold effect :thumbup: