background removal tips?

Hello all,

Its been a while since I was on here last. I miss seeing all your fine work and am going to be visiting more often again. Had some computer/internet probs and have also been busy as a 1 armed paper hanger carving wax.

Anyway, I have been practicing here and there on brass with some copied art and some designs of my own. Although my hand is getting steadier and the practice is paying off slowly, there is one thing that keeps bugging me.

On artwork where i want the back to be recessed and possibly blackened for an antique look, I have been having trouble finding the best technique to acheive this. I like more sculptural engraving so I tend to prefer a significant step down with the background, and I have about 5 flat gravers of varying widths.

The problem is this- when I engrave the lines on a given design, it takes more than twice as long as the line work to remove the background. This is due in part to the fact that there is some significant area to remove due to design balance, but also it just seems like a pain in the rear to remove it all with gravers. And when I use my foredom handpiece to grind it out with burs, the slightest vibration in the handpiece lessens the accuracy tremendously.

I have been on the fence about getting the air powered handpiece for my gravermach, because it is expensive, however i think it would probably make grinding the background a breeze.

Does anyone have any suggestions, aside from the pneumatic rotary handpiece, that might help me expedite this procedure?

(I usually like to finish the background with a stipple finish from a point bit, however i would like to learn to make it smooth enough to polish with stones.)

Thanks in advance!
Michael

there is no way around it background removal always takes a lot of time. I usualy use a flat h&c to get the big stuff out of the way, smooth it down level with push or power graver then stipple. I dont use rotery to easy to miss and way to hard to fix. If you look at my posts or threads the relief pieces can take 3 times longer to do.
Carl Bleile

I agree with Carl

I use small flats as well. Background relief work takes time. A lot of time. The harder the metal the more time it takes. The deeper you want to go, the more time it takes. That's one of the reasons why clients pay a lot more for relieved backgrounds.

Another thing you can do to even the background is after you have cut it out as evenly as possible is to use the airtool (or a hammer) with a punch in it to flaten high spots etc.

Not all rotaries are the same. Cheaper ones tend to be gutless. Dearer ones tend to work better but the best I've had a play with is the e-max and that costs the most!! A lot of the high speed rotaries (and micromotors) have a very low torque on them and in some cases all you have to do is touch the metal and it stops rotating................ A lot of it depends on what you want to be engraving and the metal it's made of. Plus your expectations of how fast backgrounds should be able to be removed.

Cheers
Andrew

Andrew,

Does the E-max have the torque needed to remove back ground or do you need the torque multiplier? It also had a max speed of 35,000 RPM. Is that a sufficient speed to keep the bur from running?

My dad has one on his desk at home that he never uses. The hand piece is burnt up because the unit was accidentally left on for too long. I was wondering if it would be worth getting a new hand piece, or should I concentrate on getting the ultra 850 for background removal?

I see one formidable problem besides control with the rotary method. As your skill increases and your background areas diminish in size, removing them with a rotary tool becomes more difficult and the control problem becomes magnified. If you are doing large stuff, this will work nicely. On the other hand, the time you think it should take is another problem. You cannot find ways that are that much of an improvement. It is just a fact that the time it takes to remove background is the time it takes. It is part of the price you pay for doing higher end work.

I would say cut time in other areas if you can, and allow the time to remove background to be what it is. I don't think you will find a fast way to do it other than maybe acid. You can do the acid and and at the same time do other things, but even then it must be watched. Using acid is a totally other process. There is a lot of relativity in this idea I think, so you need to be versitile enough to apply more solutions than one to any goven project. That is why I say it is relative.

I just stick with the hammer and chisel removal of background or the gravermax, even though the rotary will speed it up a little. You can remove quite a bit of metal this way. To find burs that will fit every situation is pretty expensive. They get dull and need to be repalced, so the time you save is the money you spend to do this. In the long run, I am not sure the time you save is worth the expense. I could be wrong. When I have more time than I have money, I spend my time. When I have more money than I have time I spend my money. I personally think this is a good policy, but that is just me.

Another thing to consider is the depth of your work. You can get an awful lot of demension in your work with a very shallow approach. Look at a nickle or other coin, and turn it up where you can observe it as if you are looking at a land scape. Looking from the edge across the plane or surface. You will see the minute depth of the image, but it is very demensional while looking perpendicular at the coin.

The effect is in the smoothness and the knowledge of making relief work. Most people want to have heavy sculpting. That is okay, but very time consumng. If you can achieve good deminsion in shallow sculpting, you have learned a great way to diminish the time required and the effect is created with knowledge not depth.

The coin engravers can attest to this truth I think, right guys?

And that is my two cents on the subject!

Just food for thought....................

Ron S

Thanks for the tips guys!

Hello Michael,
I am fairly new to the art of engraving guns and knifes, although I did engrave western silver for quite some time. When I first started the gun engraving I was cutting the background with gravers like every one else. I found this very slow. I found an air graver like the on GRS has, on sale with a scope and even though I got a bargen for it, it was still not cheap. I do have to say that Iam very happy with the tool and it has cut down on the removal of the background some. One thing is clear, even with the air tool it still takes a lot more time to do the relief and if you try to hurry to much you will make mistakes. As far as the tips go, I get used ones from my dentist and shape them. Most are to big to use anyway from the factory so I sharpen them to a smaller size to get in the real tight places. I use the smallest factory oval I can get for the field and go back and clean up with the ones I have sharpend.

Doug A