u/r_r_miles

Or rather, about duckin' time. 😅

Hand engraved Cherry Blossoms and copper inlay with 1mm pavé diamonds on a Spyderco Bug.

r/handengraving needs a logo.

Post your original HAND-ENGRAVED circular designs that would make a nice logo representing what this sub is about.

Must be hand-engraved, not drawn, not dremel'd, not carved, not etched, not somebody else's work, not a crosspost, not a link to an image.

Post with most upvotes wins the empty spot.

Deadline is... whenever. 🤷🏽‍♂️

Get creative! Keep it classy! Let's see some effort! Show off your skills!

Archer went from monochrome to tricolor again!

Hand engraved and sculpted Spyderco Delica seconds with pavé set 1mm diamonds. Copper inlay. This was the design used in Jeff Parke's Advanced Knife Engraving class in April.

I couldn't afford to go so I took a few screenshots of the ones he and his students posted. I redrew it by hand as best I could and got to work. I learned so much by doing this. A lot of the principles of layout and scroll design made sooo much more sense when I was redrawing it. Also noticed that the original skull was inlaid in silver first, then sculpted. I didn't catch that until AFTER I sculpted the whole skull in steel directly. Took me 3 days to complete.

I highly recommend finding the best hand engraving by the best hand engravers and trying to duplicate it yourself. Copy the masters if you want to get good. Your original designs will improve drastically.

Double sided Spyderco Delica.

Here's another process video highlighting the mirroring technique with a bit more start-to-finish flare. The knife is almost done, had to pause it so I could get my website functional to have a place to sell it! Plus I got distracted and wanted to see if I could freehand a similar design on my first Zippo. Several flaws in it but overall I'm happy with it. :)

As promised here's the links to the tools/suppliers I use for these engraving projects. Included are some of the pro engravers I look to heavily for inspiration/motivation. I hope this helps!

GRS Tools
Tira Mitchell
Transfer Wax
Chris Cobb's Zippo holding fixture IG @chr1sco
Jake Newell IG @customhandengraving
Jeff Parke IG @j.parke1
CapCut - video editor
iPhone 12 Promax
My extremely barebones website rrmiles.com

p.s. Don't feel discouraged by the insanely high prices of the equipment listed. I'll admit, shit's ridiculously expensive but I love every single unfair-interest-bearing moment of it. And if these posts bring any of you one step closer to pursuing your passion or improving your craft or even satisfying 3 minutes of creative curiosity, worth every penny.

edit: Rustoleum flat black enamel was used to darken it

As always, questions or comments 👇🏽

Progress so far! I hope this short video accurately describes how I mirrored the image from one side of the knife to the other with perfect accuracy.

I did the tape copy before shading it because it's way easier to mirror the design without all that extra detail. So outline > tape > shade > flip > transfer > outline > shade.

Note: I did remove the knife before putting the Thermoloc into the microwave but I did not press the record button when capturing that step. 🫠

Questions if ya got em! 👇🏽

Shading is done on one side. Time to flip it over and do the other side with the mirrored image. I'll try to post a video tomorrow of the flip. I'm quite happy with it so far. Turned out muuuch better than I planned.

Spyderco Delica stainless steel. About 4 hours in so far. I plan to shade it heavily and mirror the design on the other side.

Transfer wax and and sharp pencil were used for the freehand layout. I did one shallow pass with the graver to set it, then another deeper pass to clean it up and make it more visible for the mirroring process. I'll post more explanations as I go.

When it's complete I'll post links to the tools used and instructional/inspiration videos and socials.

Any questions? Feel free to post them in the comments! Thanks for looking! 🙇🏽‍♂️