A new project

Mark Knapp

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Apr 25, 2016
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Fairbanks Alaska
I've started a new project. I'm going to embellish a customers knife with engraving (risky I know, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right). This custom knife was ordered in 2012 (I'm afraid I have a five year backlog of knives to build). Since I wasn't engraving at the time of the order, this order didn't include engraving. I've always tried to give my customers a little more than they expected. I'm not charging extra for the engraving but this will be the first paying customer to get some of my engraving.


Here's the knife it's going on. It has a damascus blade, and abalone, blue amber and nickle silver on the handle. The butt cap and the spacers will get engraved.


The sketch, the butt cap and the practice piece. Nickle silver cuts like butter compared to the floor plate and the stainless steel folder bolster of my two previous projects so this is a lot of fun.

I may have made a serious blunder on my Nimschke practice piece on the folder bolster. I used Bulini cross hatch shading on it instead of the traditional shading done in scroll engraving. I thought it looked more natural and thought I'd try it.

The engraving art form is hugely steeped in tradition and it's easy for the uninformed to make these kinds of mistakes. I made other errors on the folder too but I think the shading was the big one.

On this knife I will stick to the traditions, I think this is no place for experimentation.

When I got up this morning I put on my thick skin so please let me know how I might make this better.

Thanks Mark
 

Mark Knapp

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Apr 25, 2016
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Fairbanks Alaska
Here's the practice plate with the background flattened and stippled. I did get a copy of Ron Smith's first book (I think) from FEGA. It was about half price of those I saw elsewhere, I wonder why? I like it very much and am studying it. I hope that it will show in the practice plate.

I can see that my leaves are still a little wonky. I will work on them. Also I'm going to make fewer leaves but make them bigger. I also see that I need to pay more attention to the border.

Anything else?




Thanks Mark
 

didyoung

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Start with a well cut egg shape for your butt plate.
You have a flat area in the outline of the butt plate.
Use your divider's to scribe the border.
Work at cutting a smooth constant border....same width and depth throughout.
When I started I cut a lot of geometric patterns...doing that I began to learn to control my graver....being able to cut a good line is very important.
 
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dlilazteca

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Agreed, maintain a good consistent width border, clients can't tell (sometimes) from scroll design, but borders and letters there experts and will quickly identify any flaws, you don't want the eye to be attracted to those.

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dlilazteca

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If your having trouble I would cut the border with a 90, and I would cut to the line of your transfer or scribe, either on the inside or outside but not the the line itself. So try to make your scribe line or transfer as clean as possible.

GunEngraver.com Custom Guns Knives and More PAYMENT PLANS Available
 
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Big-Un

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All the lines, especially those next to the relief areas, need to be crisp and sharp. What I see here looks either rushed or removed way too close to the lines before cleaning them up. Relieving background is really labor/time intensive.
 

Mark Knapp

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All the lines, especially those next to the relief areas, need to be crisp and sharp. What I see here looks either rushed or removed way too close to the lines before cleaning them up. Relieving background is really labor/time intensive.

I'm sure what you are seeing are nicks from the background removal and stippling. I'll clean them up before I start shading. Should I have done something different? Thank you
 
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Mark Knapp

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Here's the finished practice butt plate.

I will work on borders more before I do the real butt plate. Also the leaves look a little stiff. Like I said earlier, I'm going to make fewer but bigger leaves, and try to give them more life.

I struggled a little bit with the shading of the flower peddles. I have Meak's book and Ron Smiths book but I couldn't find an example of how someone might shade a flower like that. Can anyone show me an example I could study?

OOPS forgot to put in the picture, here it is.



Thanks for looking Mark
 
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Jonathans

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Hi Mark,
I'm just a beginner at this and appreciate the blade smithing I've seen of your over at Bladeforums.
What makes me uncomfortable about this practice plate is th main scroll. If you look at it an isolate the back bone of the scroll, there is a major elbow at its start, and two serious flats where it's forced against the border. Fix this, and it will flow much better. I'm pretty impressed with your jump in attitude and willingness to get to the steel! No doubt if you keep at it you'll be embellishing your blades with great engraving in short order.
 

Mark Knapp

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Hi Mark,
I'm just a beginner at this and appreciate the blade smithing I've seen of your over at Bladeforums.
What makes me uncomfortable about this practice plate is th main scroll. If you look at it an isolate the back bone of the scroll, there is a major elbow at its start, and two serious flats where it's forced against the border. Fix this, and it will flow much better. I'm pretty impressed with your jump in attitude and willingness to get to the steel! No doubt if you keep at it you'll be embellishing your blades with great engraving in short order.

I see what you are saying. I wonder what I could do prevent something like that other than just not designing a scroll in an oval. Maybe I should put a sliver of background in there to keep the scroll round. I could also widen the border in that area to keep the scroll round, another departure from general rules of design. I have inadvertently broken a cardinal rule in scroll design, I wonder if there is an element of except-ability in some cases. Maybe results differ depending on who you talk to.

Thanks for the heads-up, I hadn't seen it. I'd like to hear others weigh in.
 
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Big-Un

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Mark, your butt plate looks pretty good. Most folks try and remove background quickly with burr and come too close to the design outlines, usually nicking them. That is what I though I saw in the preliminary photo. I remove the background close to the lines with a graver before using a burr, when I use a burr. Mostly I remove the background with gravers.
 

Mark Knapp

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Mark, your butt plate looks pretty good. Most folks try and remove background quickly with burr and come too close to the design outlines, usually nicking them. That is what I though I saw in the preliminary photo. I remove the background close to the lines with a graver before using a burr, when I use a burr. Mostly I remove the background with gravers.

Thanks, yeah, I used all gravers too. First a 120 degree, then the flat. Thanks again.
 

gcleaker

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I just wanted to say if you haven’t been to marks site as he creates a masterpiece step by step take the time. You will not be sorry. Greg
 
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