Cheat Sheet for Checking Heel Length

[AllenClapp]

Many people are told to use some fraction of a millimeter for heels on gravers used for specific functions but they have no clue how to gauge that length when looking at the heels under a microscope or with a loupe. The easy way is to keep a few pieces of wire of known gauges of wire at hand to use for comparisons. You can drill a hole and glue them into a short piece of wood rod that you can mark with the wire size.

 

[GusAragon]

I love you

 

[monk]

i have a 20x loupe with a mm scale. that works nicely also.

 

[T.G.III]

Now if I could just figure out how to convert those numbers over to my draw plates.

 

[AllenClapp]

Now if I could just figure out how to convert those numbers over to my draw plates.

Draw a wire through each hole. Measure diameter with vernier calipers and mark the holes or make a chart.

 

[AllenClapp]

i have a 20x loupe with a mm scale. that works nicely also.

Can you recommend a source for such a loupe?

 

[Flatsguide]

Is heel length that critical?
Thanks Richard

 

[AllenClapp]

Is heel length that critical?
Thanks Richard

Heel length can be very critical, depending upon the scale of your work. A longer heel works well for cutting straight lines, but the back side of the graver will chatter across the back side of the cut when you make sharp turns with a long heel. A longer heel is easier to maintain a level cut [instead of porpoising up and down] but it can really screw up the back side of a sharp turn. The shorter the turn you need to make, the shorter the heel that should be on the graver. Shorter heels require more graver control. Once you gain good graver control, you can do most anything with a short heel. Many gravers use heels of 1/4 mm or less for much or all of their work for that reason. I put that method up because a few days ago I heard some new engravers grousing about having trouble being consistent with the length of their heels.
As an aside, my understanding is that parallel heels for vee gravers came along when tiny heels came into general use. The traditional method of grinding heels only produced a small triangular heel at the tip and the sides did not go up enough to make deeper cuts without producing a secondary kink in the sides of the cuts. Parallel heels were needed to produce flat sides in vee cuts. Parallel heels that run fully up the sides of the graver also allow polished vee gravers of appropriate sizes to be used instead of flat gravers for wide-side flare cuts.

 

[mtlctr]

1/4 mm = .010" . human hair usually .003 /.004

 

[Flatsguide]

Allen, thank you. My understanding from Allen’s explanation is a long heel for most straight long border runs and a short, 1/4mm, for most everything else.
CheersRichard

 

[JJ Roberts]

Allen, Can you show some different engraving samples of your work with different heel lengths. J.J.

 

[monk]

Can you recommend a source for such a loupe?

mcmaster carr supply.com. they sent the wrong one. iwas going to ship it back. they said to just keep the wrong one and sent the correct mm model in a couple days. i've dealt with them many times over the years. a good firm to deal with.

 

[dhall]

A quick "hack"; a sheet of plain copy/printer paper is essentially 0.1 mm. A 1/4 mm heel would be about the thickness of 2-3 sheets of paper. Sometimes this is fairly easy to imagine. 10 sheets of paper are very close to 1.0 mm.

Best regards,
Doug

 

[mtlctr]

Is heel length that critical?
Thanks Richard

For most general cutting I doubt it.
for Centuries graver sharpening was done by hand and we’ve seen the results . Sharpening was a skill in itself. it took/ takes eye / hand coordination to achieve results. The modern sharpening fixt & hones have fueled the perfect geometry obsession imho. In the end engravers will figure out what works for them.
kent

 

[AllenClapp]

For most general cutting I doubt it.
for Centuries graver sharpening was done by hand and we’ve seen the results . Sharpening was a skill in itself. it took/ takes eye / hand coordination to achieve results. The modern sharpening fixt & hones have fueled the perfect geometry obsession imho. In the end engravers will figure out what works for them.
kent

All true. The reason that I put up this thread was that several new engravers were having trouble with two things. The first was consistency--and they wanted a way to check themselves. The second was confusion when they went back and forth between narrow gravers with short sides and wide gravers with long sides. The same heel length looks longer on the narrow gravers and shorter on the wide gravers. They were looking for a crutch to use until repetition kicked into place.
The use of sheets of paper as suggested by Doug works as well, as long as you always use the same paper, but something like a wire or thick piece of paper or metal sheet that is one thickness is better than several sheets of thinner stock that may have varying amounts of gap between them.
The only thing that really matters is finding the heel length that works best for you and learning how to make that length consistently.

 

[DaveatWeirs]

I don't know if it's terribly helpful but I use the lines on my fingerprints. I spent ages measuring them with steel rulers to get the right sizes and then when I had them the right size I'd count how many fingerprint lines wide they are. Each person's print widths are slightly different but they tend to stay the same so when you get used to it with your own prints you can use it as a fairly reliable quick reference.