A balino question

When I look at a game picture on a gun, I have to hold it just right to see it. When a cast is done of the picture I can see it at any angle. What can I do to the steel picture to see at any angle?
Rod

Hi Rod

The casting is a matt finish so it won't reflect any light. That basically means you can see it at any angle

Inking the bulino on the metal would be the only solution that I could think of.

There's a couple of schools of thought on this. The first is that you shouldn't ink them as the dots/lines should be done in such a way so as not to reflect light. The second is to ink the picture so it can be seen at almost any angle.

I've seen examples of both and it really does boil down to personal taste and preference.

Cheers
Andrew

Hi Rod,

French gray is the best treatment for bulino scenes. Glitter and glare distort any fine line engraving, so if you kill the shine, the engraving will show much better. Original Bulino was primarily a printing process and it wouldn't matter there, but for gun steel where you are using textures instead of ink, you have to approach it differently and it requires many more lines to get really intense tones. I don't polish my gravers to a mirror polish like some might teach you. That is mostly for jewelry, western bright cut, lettering and such. I leave about a 600 grit finish on the tool. This helps a bit, but any fine etching process works the best. You can get that with a rust blue process, (not too course) and sometimes it is taken care of in the heat treating process if you are lucky enough to get to work on a gun before it gets heat treated. Of course this won't work on other metals such as pure gold and silver. If you are engraving on a shiney plate or item, engraving will show up better with a satin finish on the surface. High polish again tends to distort a good engraving.

You can even get a slight etch with a normal vat blue process and then you simply remove it with a rust remover (naval jelly, brownells rust remover, or toilet bowl cleaner that has phosphoric acid in it.) Then the addition of ink intensifies the work, but a good engraving should stand on its own without ink. Ink should olny enhance it for photography and such. There won't be or shouldn't be a whole lot of difference if you get the textures right. That requires a lot of lines,however. there are also means of patinaing the metal which would work too. That is sort of what french gray is.

You might even try a very light and fine grain sand blasting, but be careful here, because if you use too course of blasting compound you can obliterate your fine lines. I have heard that using talcom powder will dull the cuts, but I haven't tried that and can't say for sure.

I use Pilkington's American Rust blue and you don't have to do the whole process to get a fine etch, but it takes some time. Just follow the instructions and you should do okay. Cleanleness is the trick.

Killing the shine and intense shading is the path to good definition.
Ron S