First inlay attempt

[dylan.mk3]

Hey everyone my name is Dylan and I’ve been engraving for about a year on and off as a hobby. Ive always been fascinated with precious stones and that love brought me into the world of jewelry, engraving is just what I decided to start with ( not realizing how deep of a hole I’d be in once I started )

here’s my first inlay project and practice piece, if people would like to see more work I’ll try and dig out some photos of some practice plates I’ve worked on !

 

[EngraverHand]

Hi, looks fairly good to me to be your first attempt Looks like you have been using copper wire by wire and then often you can end up with these "holes" as copper works hard very fast and are difficult to "blend" together... but still pretty good Now try to make a thin outline around your inlay.. it might be fifficult to see without as everything is shiny.

Keep at it

 

[alwayslearning2012]

I'm just starting here, But I'm really amazed that inlay can be done over such a large area. I had no idea.

But it begs the question, instead of wire, could copper plate be used instead?

Further still, could one do inlay within inlay? Meaning perhaps a copper plate, with some silver wire inlay?

 

[T.G.III]

The basic answer is yes, you can "stack" inlays, starting with your hardest metals and adding progressively softer metals, it works.

Had a lettering project once where I had lost my line and made an obvious over cut, I was way to far into the project and too short on time to start over, so to fix it, I dressed the cut with a much deeper channel and inlaid a fresh matching piece and re-cut the line, the over cut vanished.

There are talented individuals that inlay gold into mother of pearl etc.

I'm still learning as well, zero formal training, just literature and the two forums and a ton of mistakes to learn from.

 

[T.G.III]

Hey everyone my name is Dylan and I’ve been engraving for about a year on and off as a hobby. Ive always been fascinated with precious stones and that love brought me into the world of jewelry, engraving is just what I decided to start with ( not realizing how deep of a hole I’d be in once I started )

here’s my first inlay project and practice piece, if people would like to see more work I’ll try and dig out some photos of some practice plates I’ve worked on !

Way better than my first, I've not done and area yet, just borders.

 

[dylan.mk3]

I'm just starting here, But I'm really amazed that inlay can be done over such a large area. I had no idea.

But it begs the question, instead of wire, could copper plate be used instead?

Further still, could one do inlay within inlay? Meaning perhaps a copper plate, with some silver wire inlay?

I personally have never tried but have heard other having success doing it with a cut out sheet rather than using multiple wires. I more or less did this for the practice and to understand the concept a bit more, also once I become fairly good with copper ill be confident inlaying most metals.

as far inlaying metals into each other, this should work as long as you ensure the base metal is harder than whats being inlayed, ive also seen artists use different karats of gold wire placed next to each other to create a gradient of color and it is absolutely stunning!

 

[dylan.mk3]

Way better than my first, I've not done and area yet, just borders.

Thank you very much, definitely still a lot to learn !

After doing some research there is methods of cutting out the areas with pinholes and relaying another piece of wire but with how hard the copper could be to stick in certain areas for me I just chose to outline the piece to try and hide some of them, ill post pictures later im fairly pleased with the turn out !