Nimschke scroll for practice

[G Brown]

thank you for the file it will help my mid see following my hand, for some reason it seems to work that way with me. To say I am new in this aspect is an understatement, I was a stone setter for years but never had cause to engrave.

 

[mitch]

the recently deceased Robert M. Lee collection. Some of Lee's guns just went up at auction with Rock Island Auctions but I didn't see the tools.

i'm assuming you meant Bob Lee died, not his collection. i hadn't heard that. he bought some pretty deluxe stuff over the years. i wonder what will become of Monte Mandarino's pieces...

 

[zzcutter]

I also have a pamphlet that G. Sherwood put out. It was photo copied and given to me by Ray V. was a great help for me over the years. Also One of the first books on engraving that I purchased years ago was Nimshke's engraved smoke prints. I got it from Jim Kelso who recommend It highly. It is a great scroll to study for beginners as it is not that complicated but when done right shows very well.

 

[Roger Bleile]

i'm assuming you meant Bob Lee died, not his collection. i hadn't heard that. he bought some pretty deluxe stuff over the years. i wonder what will become of Monte Mandarino's pieces...

Thanks for your editorial efforts. Correction made.

 

[mitch]

sorry, Roger, i know i shouldn't play internet grammarian, but sometimes my inner smart@$$ can't resist. a quick google search shows he died late last January.

http://www.dailyinterlake.com/commu...cle_39f4150e-d2d6-11e5-aa3a-bfa4a0c82e67.html

 

[DakotaDocMartin]

Superb examples, Roger!! I never get tired of studying Nimschke, which I think was probably the best production work in the history of gun engraving. You can tell by the hammer blows that he was getting after it!

Photo #3 certainly shows some aggressive looking progression marks. But, it sort of adds to the design. It would be tough to do that with air powered equipment other than the Enset.

 

[Big-Un]

Photo #3 certainly shows some aggressive looking progression marks. But, it sort of adds to the design. It would be tough to do that with air powered equipment other than the Enset.

The NgravR tool will make good hammer marks, mine did, and does, when I'm trying to replicate older work without actually using he hammer.

 

[Roger Bleile]

Photo #3 certainly shows some aggressive looking progression marks. But, it sort of adds to the design. It would be tough to do that with air powered equipment other than the Enset.

I am convinced that LDN and several other gun engravers of the period purposely exaggerated their progression marks on some of their commissions to add a sort of "bling" to the piece. The revolver above with the gold plated cylinder is a good example of what I mean. Some of LDN's more refined work, like that on shotguns, shows almost no progression marks.

I have experimented with trying to duplicate progression marks of varying degrees (H&C) with limited success. I have also experimented using a push graver, rocking it side to side as it moves forward with more success. We have to keep in mind that LDN and his contemporaries were not cutting guns made of the tough steels found on guns today. Even replica 19th century guns today are made of better steel than those of LDN's time. I believe that a lot more of the 19th century gun engraving was cut with a hand pushed burin than we assume.

The steel of many of 19th century guns was little more than iron. If you have done restoration engraving on an original percussion Colt, you know what I mean. As we have discussed here on another thread, most 19th and early 20th century British shotgun actions were engraved with a hand pushed burin.

If you think about it, why hammer and chisel, where you must constantly interrupt your cutting to turn the vise, when you can just push with the strong hand and turn the vise with the other, like we do with power assisted gravers. What I see in LDN's work is that the smaller the scrolls, the less prominent the progression marks. If you are cutting large scrolls with a burin, it helps your forward progress to have a slight rocking side to side movement, especially on deeply flared cuts.

Most of us have assumed that the progression marks are the result of heavy and rapid hammer blows to the chisel. I'm not so sure any more. I have watched many European engravers cutting with H&C, and like my own H&C work, theirs shows only minute progression marks, not the prominent steps evident in the LDN examples I posted above.

I will add that most German engravers rely on the onglette shaped graver for their primary work. If LDN did also, this is another part of the puzzle. In my experiments, if I used a square graver the marks were too exaggerated and unlike LDN's. Using an onglette the rocked and pushed cuts looked more like his. Maybe he used one of those one sided onglettes as mentioned above. I don't have one of those.

I'd like to see some of you who know how to use H&C and a hand pushed burin try to duplicate LDN's style of cutting. Not a whole gun or knife but just some cuts on a piece of soft steel or brass. I'm sure there is more to learn about this form of historic engraving.

 

[Brian Marshall]

THIS would be where Chris DeCamillis's Enset would shine...

It can do that one thing better than any other power assisted tool on the market!

Lindsay or GRS can't come close - if you want the "hammer & chisel look" without actually using the hammer & chisel...


Brian

 

[pilkguns]

This thread gets my vote for one the most interesting and thought provoking threads of the year.

 

[sam]

From iGraver.com, this is as close as I could get with the GRS 710 handpiece. While you can see the progression marks, they're too consistent in size and spacing to look like true hammer & chisel work.

 

[Roger Bleile]

Were you using your usual 120 degree square graver on that example?

 

[Andrew Biggs]

In one of the pictures that Roger posted on page two of this thread………the chisel marks are not consistent in so much as they appear to be used almost as part of the shading and not the entire length. They appear where the graver has been leaned over and the cut flared. As Roger has noted, it almost seems deliberate

One thing I have always wondered is why engravers want to replicate hammer and chisel cuts. If you want chatter marks in the cuts……….then use hammer and chisel. It's cheap enough.

I’ve done a few small restoration jobs for clients and to the naked eye there was no noticeable difference between the old hammer/chisel cuts and mine using a GRS handpiece. It was only under magnification that it was noticeable, but even then, not by much. What was more important was the width, depth and style of the cutting as that was far more noticeable and obvious, not chatter marks.

Does the customer see any of this or is it just engravers? I suspect it’s just engravers

Cheers
Andrew

 

[sam]

Were you using your usual 120 degree square graver on that example?

120 graver, Roger.

 

[sam]

Andrew: I think there's a certain charm to those hammer & chisel cuts. However, when I engraved with hammer & chisel I never paid much attention to it and the cuts I made were very smooth. But looking at Nimschke's work it's hard not to like the character of those cuts and you can just about see him whacking away with chips flying in all directions!

True, if you want that look then use hammer & chisel. Easy to say but much harder to actually do if you lack experience doing it.

 

[John B.]

As one who cuts a lot of H&C I don't see progression marks as necessarily any part of the decorative process.
Progression marks come about for me when I am in a hurry and drive the chisel forward with heaver and fewer blows.
Quite frankly this happens mostly when someone wants a lot of engraving for a smaller price or requests heavy, deep flair cuts.
When taking more time, using lighter taps and turning into the curve there are almost no visible progression marks.
Most of LDN's progression marks occur on his more commercial everyday work and/or on his heavy flairs.
I believe that engraving time was a major factor.
And remember, we now look at what was everyday bread and butter commercial work to Nimschke as treasured artifacts. They are.
But look at his engraving that was done for high end clients, presentation or in a smaller finer format you will see few progression marks.
Just my opinion.

 

[jplower]

Thank you friends, for comments and posting photos. The Spencer rifle photo is especially interesting because it is an example of his early work in steel, probably mid to late 1860's. As I presented an 1877 production Colt SA some months back for comment, the Spencer photo is showing the same confusing end cuts that I found on my supposed Nimschke cut SA. The Harris book clearly shows his and Young's style of end cuts, and these guns share end cuts that look like Nimchke andYoung. The hooks that

Young uses are in several places in both examples. Comments?

CIMG1123