Celtic watch engraving

vilts · Apr 21, 2015

It's been a while since I posted anything here, so here comes my latest project - "Invicta" in celtic style.

Rather pain in the neck to engrave these gold plated things. And the steel very hard as well. But came out decent enough.

mdengraver · Apr 21, 2015

Exquisitely awesome, and engraved on gold-plated metal, makes it even more precious, from the talented hands of a master engraver!

Andrew Biggs · Apr 21, 2015

Looks great, Vilts

Those celtic designs can certainly tie you up in knots

Is that leaf on the side of the watch marijuana or some sort of Estonian acanthus leaf?

Cheers
Andrew

vilts · Apr 21, 2015

Andrew Biggs said:
Looks great, Vilts

Those celtic designs can certainly tie you up in knots

Is that leaf on the side of the watch marijuana or some sort of Estonian acanthus leaf?

Yep, that's the acanthus that some people smoke here

davidshe · Apr 21, 2015

Vilts, I love this work you did! The variety of Celtic designs makes it very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

Doc Mark · Apr 22, 2015

People who have not tried to cut perfect, symmetrical Celtic knots cannot appreciate the degree of exquisite execution shown here! The cleanliness of the background removal is stunning. Particularly on such tough material. My hat's off to you Vilts!

RDP · Apr 22, 2015

Beautifulwork,thanks for sharing,

Richard.

John P. Anderson · Apr 22, 2015

Very nice work. Always a pleasure to see your work.

The leaf looks similar to our Montana Medical Acanthus in it's vegetative stage.

John

monk · Apr 22, 2015

just beautiful kind of covers this superb piece of art. thanks, vilts, for showing this.

vilts · Apr 23, 2015

Thank y'all for the kind words.

It was interesting to see the response from watch enthusiasts about this. All who commented liked the engraving, some were annoyed by the leaf and even some more were annoyed that the watch was Invicta, not some "real" watch. But what do you do - when clients wants it, he wants it

. And I don't complain one bit, it was very good experience to do the celtic style and also the gold plating.

Idaho Flint · Apr 23, 2015

Vilts, that is a beautiful job you did there. Very pleasing to the eye. Anyone would be proud to have that.

Mike

VEATCH · Apr 23, 2015

Amazing work!

Sebastian Leyh · Apr 23, 2015

Very nice piece Vilts,

looks great and I realy like it. Thanks for posting.

Dimas · Apr 26, 2015

Very good, greeting.

dkemppai · Apr 26, 2015

Very nice design. It adds character and style to that watch! Very well done!

I clicked on your facebook page. Engraving, coin presses, audio, and the rust bluing box. Very neat things you are doing there!
As for the cracked coin die, that's disappointing! Good tempering is a must! Perhaps O1 would be a better steel, or even S7 or H13?

Dan

vilts · Apr 28, 2015

dkemppai said:
Very nice design. It adds character and style to that watch! Very well done!

I clicked on your facebook page. Engraving, coin presses, audio, and the rust bluing box. Very neat things you are doing there!
As for the cracked coin die, that's disappointing! Good tempering is a must! Perhaps O1 would be a better steel, or even S7 or H13?

Dan

Thanks, Dan!

I am actually currently working on O1 dies. They are much-much better to engrave than the D2. But for some reason or other I haven't gotten them to heat treat properly, yet. One die that I made was so soft that the "neck" of the die expanded during pressing. Then I heat treated it second time, it was bit better, but still not proper and still too soft. So "work in progress"

Idaho Flint · Apr 28, 2015

Vilts
When you are heat treating the die, are you taking into count the size of metal you are heating? The larger the amount of metal, the more long you need to keep the piece at temperature in order to make sure the entire piece is heated throughout.
Mike

vilts · Apr 28, 2015

Idaho Flint said:
Vilts
When you are heat treating the die, are you taking into count the size of metal you are heating? The larger the amount of metal, the more long you need to keep the piece at temperature in order to make sure the entire piece is heated throughout.
Mike

I think so, I hope so

The piece itself is 35mm or 1 3/8" diameter. First I heat it up to 700C/1300F, keep it 10 minutes. Then heat it up to 850C/1560F and keep it there for 50 min, quench to rapeseed oil. Then 2 x 2h temper at 270C/520F.

850C/1560F is the highest they recommend for it, steel is Uddeholm Arne, so that is from datasheet. First I tried with lower temp, but as that didn't work, then went higher and longer. Still no dice.

So now I plan to use 820C/1510F and ramp up to the temperature very slowly and keep it there for hour or so. My only guess is that either the piece didn't reach the correct temperature, my oven is lying about temperature (don't think so), oil didn't cool the piece fast enough (too little oil?), or Saturn was in Aries and O1 doesn't like that situation.

Idaho Flint · Apr 28, 2015

It has been a while, but if I remember correctly, it is 1 hour for each inch of steel. So since you are larger than 1" in diameter, I would recommend having both the hardening and tempering be for at least 1 1/2 hours.
Not sure if that will help, but I hope it does.
Mike

dkemppai · Apr 30, 2015

vilts said:
I think so, I hope so

The piece itself is 35mm or 1 3/8" diameter. First I heat it up to 700C/1300F, keep it 10 minutes. Then heat it up to 850C/1560F and keep it there for 50 min, quench to rapeseed oil. Then 2 x 2h temper at 270C/520F.

O1 should be better for the die. As I recall it's about twice the toughness of D2. If you look at S7 or H13 those would be about 3 times as tough as O1. You will probably want to hold at preheat a lot longer than 10 minutes.

If the die is getting to high heat internally, it also needs to cool pretty fast to harden. It's a low alloy content steel. One would guess that the inside isn't getting cool fast enough to harden properly. Switching to something with more alloy could help, as the cooling rates for those steels should be lower. S7 for example will harden in air, but for big cross sections of S7 oil may be needed to speed up the cooling...
Heat treating is an art. And I'm by no means an expert!

Good Luck!

Dan

Celtic watch engraving

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