Quite probably engraving tools, Robin

MichaelG.

.

http://expositions.bnf.fr/bosse/grand/214.htm

Image located via Wikipedia

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 12/07/2019 23:13:30

I used to watch an engraver engraving shotgun side plates. Used to marvel at the quality of his work, very delicate especially in steel However if you got a receipt from him you couldn't read his handwriting

Roy

A very good friend of mine was a master engraver who used to decorate the expensive guns of the prestigious gun makers. When he finished a gun, which took several months work, I used to photograph them for him. Here are some examples.

Wow + 1

I've seen it being done, it is a fascinating process – and knowing that one slip could ruin weeks, if not months, of work must be nerve-wracking.

My friend's name was John Salt – if you look closely you can see his name in the bottom 2 photos. He died a couple of years ago.

He taught me the rudiments of engraving some years ago, but I'm still very much a novice.

Remarkable craftsmanship.

Neil

Factorial Wow!

Gary, the bottom three pictures are signed, you missed one.

.

I am happy to be wrong, and learn something new, Frank … but :

I have never seen curved gravers being used in an horologist's lathe.

MichaelG.

I think engraving and polishing must be the oldest metal-finishing trades.

Having seen decorative metalwork as early as Bronze-Age in Dorchester Museum, I woinder if they used metal tools or flint gravers?

A couple of years or so ago the Dorset Echo published a photo of the back of a bronze mirror, decorated with dozens of overlapping scallop-shell patterns. Accepting a newspaper's normal photograph definition is not as fine as a standard photographic print, looking at the image of the mirror closely you could see the tiny irregularities in the spacing and curves of the shell ribs you'd expect from hand work with what to us would be crude tools – but none had slipped over the borders.

If anything those tiny imperfections stress this was the patient hand work of an unknown craftsman or woman millennia ago, working with this up-to-date material with so many practical and aesthetic possibilities.

I don't know where it is now, but the mirror's structure is a very elegant circular reflector on a handle composed as I recall, of a row of three toroids.

It's interesting and rather awe-inspiring to see that the decorative work of many otherwise functional items made now, still often uses motifs developed hundreds or even thousands of years ago, as the second of Gary Wooding's photographs show by all that Celtic knot-work.

Howard hand engraving is far from a dying art, it is alive and well look at this link for Cesare Giovanelli's school in Italy **LINK** note entrance where the flags are — it is in the shape of graver point. Giovanelli is a very interesting person – worth a read, also a very unassuming man.

There are lots of engravers working in the UK as well particularly in the gun trade as well as jewellery etc, incredibly skilful people !

John