Here is a picture of my latest attempt at being an engraver. Old English three letter monogram on a sterling silver money clip. The picture is not the greatest.
You're ready to go one step further..... I love Old English lettering - it's got style which you want to maximize ... for the next step, cut equidistant, horizontal lines in the interior of the letter after you've got the outline done. Then use a flat to bright cut one side to give it a three dimensional look. You can even cut the top or bottom in addition to one of the sides. It adds another angle of perspective .... as if you were seeing the letter from the top left or bottom right.
You'll have to try this on a new set of letters because you can't do it after stippling. A 37 or 38 flat will do just fine until you get hang of cutting with the edge of a flat. From there you can go to a 40 or larger to get an even wider cut.
Here's a block letter which can better illustrate what I'm trying to describe. It can add up to a great deal more time invested per letter but it sure looks great ... especially when your doing heirloom type stuff.
Interesting! So what you're doing is a different background technique inside the letter (the horizontal lines) and then using the bright cuts along one 'side' to give the illusion that the letter is raised up off of the background rather than cut into it, right? I like the look of that and will have to give it a try.
That's ok Sandy ... start with a 37 or 38 because it's much easier to control. You just want to bevel one side of the letter a little. Even rolling a square over a little will work. With the way you handled the smooth and precise curves on this Old English, it'll be easy!! Just in case yer wonderin' about getting those horizontal lines even. Just use the width of the graver to guide your cut against your previous line. That's good practice for cutting parallel lines without a scribe or measuring.
Steve, you got it. Diagonal lines work nice too. When you got a bunch of letters and words going across something, you can add perspective to the entire word as well. Say you are looking down at a 5 letter word head on. Bright the tops of all the letters and then do the left side of the last two letters and the right side of the first two letters. Looks great on a gun. Heck ... I think it just looks good.
Hope that helps out. Lettering isn't easy so I just thought I would share a cool trick.
I like the tip about using the graver (already in your hand) to space the lines. I assume that if you want them finer you just do the first pair, then split the difference by eye (which tends to be pretty precise on things like that) and then do lines 4 - n by using the graver to 'reach back' past the line you just did to get the spacing for the next one.
Do you have a picture of lettering with the right / left shading? I'm thinking it should look like it's curved / arched, possibly even looking like it's rising up off of the surface but until I get a chance to try it / see it I can't be sure I'm picturing it right.
Cross-shading spacing gets easier as you develope a rythum with experience and it goes rather fast. The tricky part is to not get any run-overs.
..........A good way to give depth and importance to any letter or heading, particularly on large letters or monograms that have mass.