Thread: thoughts
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Old 03-17-2008, 09:07 PM
Tom McArdle's Avatar
Tom McArdle Tom McArdle is offline
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Default Re: thoughts

Whether pneumatic tools are used or not, it is considered "by hand". The hand guides the tool without any help or direction. If someone were to build a flintlock rifle from a blank, but used a band saw to rough out the blank, would it no longer be "hand" made?

Just to clarify, a powered engraving tool is not a machine, as i define the term. An engraving machine, or machine engraving itself, would be the device or process where a pre formatted template or set of instructions causes a device to automatically produce a certain output. The operator may have varying degrees of involvement in the process, but the defining difference is the guidance or automatic control provided by the device. Actually, you could argue that machine engraving is not engraving at all. The pantograph machines actually do not remove metal, but displace, or scratch the metal, producing a mark that becomes part of a design. lasers burn, they do not cut, and even the output of rotating cutter type machines might be more properly called "machining" as opposed to engraving.

Do powered tools give some advantage? yes, that is why many of us use them. Do they transform what we do so that it is no longer "hand" engraving? Absolutely not.

Just a point of information!

:window:

take care,

Tom

PS I'll try and help identify whatever types of work i can. For example, those pictures of the mirrors posted above would represent repousse, not engraving. Or perhaps some sort of die forming process was used. The engraving would have been on the dies themselves. The monogram on the one would be engraving.

That is AFAIK, anyway.

Tom
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