DJ's Drop drill

KCSteve

~ Elite 1000 Member ~
Joined
Jun 19, 2007
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Location
Kansas City, MO
While I'm mentioning new things from my recent class I thought I'd mention a drill that DJ Glaser mentioned at the Tuesday night dinner.

He was telling the story of how he was working the booth at a show way back when and someone (sorry, I can't recall who) gave him a drill to do to improve his tool control.

It's devestatingly simple and - as the original person pointed out - one you can do on those plates you've already 'used up'.

Take your graver, and cut lines off the edge of the plate. They only need to be long enough to get going so you do get to use pretty much any plate you have around.

The key is that you're learning to control the tool in the ultimate test of cutting into nothing.

When you first try it you'll find that either your chip does not come off or it goes flying away. The goal is to get the chip to just drop right down next to the edge of the plate. The deeper your cut the harder that is.

Once you can reliably drop a chip right near the edge of the plate there's a refinement to train you to keep control the graver itself.

You put your thumb by the edge of the plate.

Now you have to get the chip cleanly cut free so it'll drop straight down without running the point of the graver off past the end of the cut.

After he mentioned this several of us noticed that DJ really does have good control. He was showing off the new 'pen' version of the Monarch handpiece they made for scrimshaw / bulino and he was cutting out short lines. At the end of the line the chips just tipped over and lay there, right in line with the cut and generallly with the end touching. Looked like he laid them there with a pair of tweezers.
 

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