Marcus Hunt
~ Elite 1000 Member ~
Rick, if you look at the Italian scrollwork very closely I'd say more than 95% of it cut with the 'bulino' graver geometry that they use is incredibly crude. Often the spines of the scrolls are made up of several cuts instead of one continuous cut. However, take your loupe away and stand back a bit and it works quite well (not in all cases though, that's dependent on the skills of the individual engraver) mainly because of the rich blacks they can achieve. But drag? Yes, their gravers do. It just can't be helped because of the way they are set up.
Zernike, just my 2 penny worth, but here are my thoughts on what you state about the cost of classes. In years gone by the way to learn engraving was to serve an apprenticeship. This normally ran for 5 years. After about year 2 the average apprentice was usually good enough to be let loose on real pieces for real clients and during the next 3 years any money his work would make would go to the Master who taught him. This paid for his education and, if after his apprenticeship, he decided to set up on his own the man who taught him was not out of pocket.
In this day and age however, there aren't that many apprenticeships around and a lot of youngsters just aren't willing to work for 5 years on relatively low wages. But there are classes now, as you state, which will give you instruction and that can and will help you in your engraving career whether as a professional or a hobbyist. The thing that upset me about your comments is that by questioning the costs of such instruction you are putting no value on the instructor/teacher. Why on earth would an instructor give up his day job (where often he can earn more money), fly into Kansas and teach a group of students for nothing? If that were to happen, no value would be placed on his skills as an engraver. What the instructor is doing is imparting his learned skills and knowledge which have taken many years to learn to students who wish to learn in a hands on manor. Yes, you can learn from books and by trial and error but often you'll spend many hundreds of hours trying to learn something which you could have learned in a week.
You quote learning music as an example. I started learning the guitar about 20 years ago. I learned mainly from books and had about 10 lessons in my late 20's. Now, I can play the guitar to a reasonable level but not what I'd consider to be a really good or excellent level because I hit a plateau and stayed there. Now if I'd continued with lessons I'd probably be a far more advanced guitarist than I am. By contrast, my wife started learning bass guitar a year ago and she finds it difficult to self-teach so has paid for lessons. And, whilst she calls herself very much a novice still, I've seen her playing skills improve daily and because she stuck with the boring stuff such as scales (which I skipped) she can now go to virtually any fret and name the note. So in a couple of years she will probably be a far better bassist than I am a guitarist who's been playing 20 odd years! But the rub is, she has had to pay for this knowledge to be passed to her from a teacher. Remember, 'there is no such thing as a free lunch!' Somewhere, somehow you have to pay your dues in order to learn and if you don't wish to pay for lessons you have to work more than doubly hard to teach yourself.
Zernike, just my 2 penny worth, but here are my thoughts on what you state about the cost of classes. In years gone by the way to learn engraving was to serve an apprenticeship. This normally ran for 5 years. After about year 2 the average apprentice was usually good enough to be let loose on real pieces for real clients and during the next 3 years any money his work would make would go to the Master who taught him. This paid for his education and, if after his apprenticeship, he decided to set up on his own the man who taught him was not out of pocket.
In this day and age however, there aren't that many apprenticeships around and a lot of youngsters just aren't willing to work for 5 years on relatively low wages. But there are classes now, as you state, which will give you instruction and that can and will help you in your engraving career whether as a professional or a hobbyist. The thing that upset me about your comments is that by questioning the costs of such instruction you are putting no value on the instructor/teacher. Why on earth would an instructor give up his day job (where often he can earn more money), fly into Kansas and teach a group of students for nothing? If that were to happen, no value would be placed on his skills as an engraver. What the instructor is doing is imparting his learned skills and knowledge which have taken many years to learn to students who wish to learn in a hands on manor. Yes, you can learn from books and by trial and error but often you'll spend many hundreds of hours trying to learn something which you could have learned in a week.
You quote learning music as an example. I started learning the guitar about 20 years ago. I learned mainly from books and had about 10 lessons in my late 20's. Now, I can play the guitar to a reasonable level but not what I'd consider to be a really good or excellent level because I hit a plateau and stayed there. Now if I'd continued with lessons I'd probably be a far more advanced guitarist than I am. By contrast, my wife started learning bass guitar a year ago and she finds it difficult to self-teach so has paid for lessons. And, whilst she calls herself very much a novice still, I've seen her playing skills improve daily and because she stuck with the boring stuff such as scales (which I skipped) she can now go to virtually any fret and name the note. So in a couple of years she will probably be a far better bassist than I am a guitarist who's been playing 20 odd years! But the rub is, she has had to pay for this knowledge to be passed to her from a teacher. Remember, 'there is no such thing as a free lunch!' Somewhere, somehow you have to pay your dues in order to learn and if you don't wish to pay for lessons you have to work more than doubly hard to teach yourself.
