I Quit Hand Engraving On Day One (Here’s What I Learned)

I first tried hand engraving when I was 23. After trying it for 3 hours, I gave up. The experience put me off picking up a single graver for more than 10 years. These are some of the things I hand engraved recently on silver, gold, and platinum. In this video, I'm going to share with you what I wish I knew when I first tried hand engraving in my early 20s. Hi, I'm a jeweler, optical diamond setter, and a GIA graduate gemologist based in the UK. I've been making jewelry using real gemstones and precious metal since 2003. It has taken me over 20 years to get to this point. In my channel, I help jewelry enthusiasts to start their jewelry making and hand engraving projects with very limited space at home. Here are the 5 things I wish I knew. When I was first introduced to hand engraving, I thought I need to be physically strong to do it. I thought I needed big muscles in my arm to do hand engraving. Now I can tell myself in the early 20s that hand engraving is all about fine control of the cuts through finger pressure, wrist movement, and body posture. Too much force can actually ruin the cuts. Second, getting hurt is a must when learning hand engraving. This was the graver I made when I was in my 20s. I made it once, tried it for 3 hours. Since then, I have never used it again. You can see there are some masking tape on the back of this graver. That is to cover the very sharp edges I made when polishing it. Compared to the one I made, This is what a brand new graver looks like. This section is called the face and this section is called the spine. So when I first made it, I only focused on grinding the spine to reduce the graver face and didn't think about any safety facts. So when I finished grinding, I pressed my index finger onto the spine to engrave. It took me about 30 minutes to engrave 3 very wavy lines on copper, but when I was done, I found 5 deep straight cuts in my finger. I couldn't tell you how painful it was. I wrapped up the spine with some masking tape, but the cut was so deep that I couldn't continue practicing. It took me a while to figure it out. The graver was the only thing I touched in the last 30 minutes. Looking at the graver's spine, I found that the deep cuts on my finger matched the two very sharp edges on the spine of the graver perfectly well. That's how I learned where the cuts were from. I haven't used this graver ever since. You can see the graver is quite rusty. I bought it in January 2004 and polished it in the same week, but it has been left as it was since, because every time I hold it, it reminds me the deep cuts I made on myself. And for 10 years, it put me off learning hand engraving completely. Now looking back, I can confidently tell myself those cuts were totally avoidable. What I need to do is to simply smooth those sharp edges on the spine when polishing it. I'm right-handed, In fact, that was the only time I got cuts on these fingers because of my graver. By the way, if you find my video useful, would you consider clicking the subscribe button? It will help my channel to grow and also encourage me to make more videos like this. It's completely free. Leaving a like and a comment also really help support the channel. Thank you. Third, I don't need to learn graver making before hand engraving. When I couldn't cut a straight line, I blamed myself for not being very skillful. Now I can assure my younger self, even you were skillful, without a properly polished graver, you are going nowhere. So before learning hand engraving, you really need to learn how to polish a graver properly.

Learn the difference between different gravers, graver geometry, and what each graver is used for. 4. I can't polish a graver. When I first learned hand engraving, that was in the early 2000s, My instructor showed me how she first prepared the graver using a grinding wheel and then on an Arkansas stone. Her hand was so still and her graver angle was so perfect. I was thinking, no way I can do that.

It's going to take me at least a decade, if ever.

So if I could talk to myself at that point, I would say it might be hard to hand polish all your different gravers on day 1, but you can get an off-the-shelf graver sharpening angle guide. It will help you to polish perfect gravers on day 1. All you need to do is to take about 10 minutes to learn how to use it. It was designed for complete beginners with no skill at all. My graver won't move forward no matter how hard I try, let alone making it smooth or straight. When I look at the instructor demonstrating, her graver was like ice skaters dancing on the surface of the ice. But when it was my turn, it took me 30 minutes to drag 3 wavy lines on the copper surface. Most of the time, the graver was not going anywhere. It just stuck. No matter how hard I tried, the graver just not moving anywhere. It refused to move forward at all. Now I look back, it was more like digging instead of hand engraving. In fact, once the graver is polished properly, hand engraving is all about getting the angle right. When the angle between the graver and the surface you are engraving is right, with a careful controlled push, your graver should just slide on the surface smoothly. Lift the angle a little bit, when you want to engrave a deeper line. A lot of the time, deep lines are not made by a single cut. They are made by going through the same lines again and again. So these are the 5 things I wish I knew before learning hand engraving in my early 20s. Hopefully this helps to clear your mind if you are now at a very similar stage as I was over 20 years ago. If you have other questions when learning hand engraving, let me know in the description below. When I have enough questions, I will make a video to answer all of them in one go. If you like this video, you might also like this one. I will see you in the next video.