An other try on scrolls

[Peter_M]

Not sure if that is a beauty treatment for an old friend or did I just replace the dings and battle scars with some scratches.
It looks not bad at a distance but close up it is pretty messy.

That sure will take a lot more practice, I liked it on paper but while cutting things fell apart got way to uneven and shrank to much.
Any and all comments are appreciated.

Peter

 

[SamW]

Peter, I don't know what sequence you use in layout and cutting but here is what I do to keep the scroll out to the borders...

I very lightly scribe in the border lines and the scroll making sure the scroll touches the border where I want it to. It takes a good bit of drawing and redrawing to get the scroll as correct as I can. Then I lightly cut the border lines. I cut the scroll backbone by starting the cuts in the border line and on into the next one and start again out of that border, etc. It is best to err just a tad wide (in the area of the border) on the backbone line so you can adjust by trimming for roundness and fit after the backbone has been cut completely. The trimmed area ends up in the background anyway. If you are making a transfer and then just cutting that as a guide it may be part of your problem. I never found that to work well for me so I always redraw with very light scribe lines to insure correct placement. In my early days I would transfer from side to side on a piece and cut without extensive redrawing and always ended up with more background in the second pattern than the original one, kind of like your shrinking. For very light scribing that can be easily seen and easily burnished off the metal needs to be polished to a well worn 600 grit. Otherwise the scribed lines will have to be deep to be seen and then are hard if not impossible to burnish out. In other words, the burnisher becomes my eraser while drawing the design. As for the rest of the work practice, practice practice.

 

[KSnyder]

for me engraving is to be viewed from arms length.:hammer:

 

[Roger Bleile]

Regarding "shrinking" of the design: Keep in mind that if you are engraving a type of scrollwork that has no background treatment, that your cut lines are a part of the primary design. However when your design involves background removal all of your cuts that touch the background become part of the background and not the primary design. That is why when you make a design (on paper) for engraving that has background removal you should take the step of blacking in the background. This will illustrate how much your foreground will "shrink."

RB

 

[Peter_M]

Sam, Roger and KSnyder, thank you for taking the time to comment. Sorry for taking a while to getting back here.

Looking at a arms length I guess it can pass but I suppose I shouldn't use that as an excuse. No reason at all the engraving shouldn't look good close up.

SamW,

Much appreciate you taking the time and describing the way you do things.
Guess I am not far off just need a lot more practice doing it and get that scroll thing figured out in my head.

I did draw out the pattern on paper until I came up with one that looked pleasing to my eye, then I drew it on the knife with a number of edits and redraws before I started cutting. I did draw both sides so they are a bit different. Figured since I need the practice drawing as much or more then cutting I best hand draw it all and stay away from transfers and fixing things up on the computer.

On this one I didn't try to get the scroll overlapping the border but I sure got carried away with that and ended up with to much negative space. Plus I didn't go wide so after there was noting left to trim, thing back I had the same problem when I started stamping leather but got that figured out. By rights I should be able to do the same thing in metal. Maybe slowing down a bit more and keeping the youthful enthusiasm in check a bit once I draw the pattern and it looks nice. Then I jump on it with all the enthusiasm and forget to watch out for some of the thing I should remember. This scroll thing will take quite some time to get some passable results.

Roger,

Thank you for your explanation, this is helping me a lot. This is exactly what is happening, I loose more then half of my line to the background. I did darken the background on my drawing but then when I cut of course I cut on the line so that made the pattern smaller and with removing the background and chipping away at the pattern to fix a slip here and there it shrunk some more. I have to start bigger on the drawing so it will be right once it shrinks.


Thank you

Peter