Different types of engraving vises

jjdon@pacbell.net

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Joined
Sep 2, 2008
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Location
San Francisco, Ca.
i used a pitch bowl for a time. a total pain for sure. will never use it again, even if i have to ! maybe i'll give it to my grandbaby to drive his mother crazy !

Jeweler here, and I've looked at the site over some time, and just signed up today. Occassional, not-up-to-some-of-these-guys engraver. Pitch bowls..... Yes, they are an old fashioned vise/holder thing. Setters still use shellac on a stick, which is similar. Anyway - pitch is a mixture, which I don't recall, but it seems it's tar and plaster mixed. For engraving and such it's made fairly hard, like shellac, so it holds tight. For repousse and chasing it's made much softer, like a stiff putty. Then a piece of metal is mounted and
hammered with punches of any of 1000 shapes and sizes, and the shape is formed. Often it's turned over and over, hammering from each side. This is how the Greeks and others made portraits out of sheet metal - it can be incredibly detailed, and at that level it's usually engraved with lines, etc. in the end. If you blow up the cover of this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Metropolitan-...=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220399514&sr=8-4
You'll see some fine examples of it. The figures are not cast, they are hollow, and hammered out and detailed as above....
 

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