Critique Request line width and depth

[alwayslearning2012]

I cut these "borders" with a 105. Needed the practice. I'm still learning stuff every day I cut. I'm up for some criticism.
So don't be shy. Are there things I may want to focus on more?

Any comments are appreciated.

AL12

 

[T.G.III]

Personally,
long straight lines, concentric circles, repeat until you develop a callous on your control digit.

 

[monk]

i dont agree with tj3: practice till someone in yer family notices a change in your personality. then take a day off !

 

[dhall]

Geometric shapes leave one particularly exposed for every minor wobble or inconsistency.
Something I pay attention to when engraving these types of designs is to scrupulously back-cut the beginning of the cuts so that when they intersect other cuts, everyone has a uniform line width. Without back-cutting, the beginning of the cut, even if you start "inside" an existing cut, is inevitably narrower until the graver gets to the correct depth. With uniform-width cuts, you must back cut and match the width on all line work.

 

[DaveAtWeirs]

You sure didn't make it easy on yourself! There's only three things jumping out to me; the line widths seem to vary slightly, some slight overshooting on a few of the terminations/corners and the spacing in the middle of the bars varies slightly.
but in fairness to you it's quite a challenging pattern. The lines themselves are nice and straight, it takes a bit of skill to start long straight lines dead right like that without having to turn slightly as you cut. Anything 'mechanical' or rigid is surprisingly tricky because any deviation jumps out to the eye. Like in the same way that you have to be very careful with block fonts because, if all the vertical lines aren't parallel, your eye is drawn to them, where as with script fonts you can get away with a lot and hardly anyone will notice (that's why I always suggest script font to clients when they ask. "It's more elegant, catches the light beautifully, very classic look and coughmakes my job easiercough" ).
Personally I would have ever-so-slightly rounded the corners. Turn the graver half the radius right at the end of each cut so that when it's cut from the other side it makes a small radius when it joins. Getting sharp corners at wider angles like that can be done but it's fiddely. With very rigid lines it can also help to scribe the two sides of the channel you want to cut, so instead of cutting an even width along one line, you're cutting a valley between two. Makes it easier to spot any bits where you need to re-cut

 

[ByrnBucks]

I cut these "borders" with a 105. Needed the practice. I'm still learning stuff every day I cut. I'm up for some criticism.
So don't be shy. Are there things I may want to focus on more?

Any comments are appreciated.

AL12

Good evening Always, straight lines are just a pain… and you have a whole lot of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if many would have trouble getting half that amount engraved without one little slight deviation immediately drawing the eye because of the rigid geometry.

Think you did a pretty good job for straightness, and terminating into one another. The one thing would be the consistency in width… back cutting has been mentioned and will help.

I get work doing lettering in ”Arial” font on stainless steel plates that have already been cut to size. Something that became apparent through the single chance nature of these was that one cut per line just wont do. Cutting all the letters with the first pass highlights lines that don’t quite fly straight, for example say its the letter ”T” and the middle line slightly leans to the right. On the second pass this can corrected by cutting the bottom starting leaned to the right side, shooting for the center in the middle, then leaning to the left towards the top.

Hope that makes sense, anyways approaching straight line in this manner could help even the width of your lines.

Another thing that might help with practice is putting a flat top on your graver. Even though it adds to sharpening time I find it invaluable for a visual cue as to how far the graver is tilted. With light hitting the face of your graver and the flat top, as soon as your angle changes in the slightest it should be more apparent. May help you keep that width consistent, after you can keep that angle from changing You’ll find your lines become more even.

Hope this helps and have a great week. BB