Must Have Tools for Beginners Learning Hand Engraving

Hi, if you just start learning hand engraving, you might notice that the price of the tools varies from less than $10 up to a few thousand dollars. And if you want to know what to get at the very beginning, this video is for you. We are going to cover what you will need to start hand engraving and what the tools are for, and I will also compare a little bit of the different range of the tools And so you can, based on your budget, and choose which one is the best for you. Let's get started. The first thing you need is a divider because it creates consistent and precise measurements or spacing on your workpiece. This gives you much better control when you are doing precise work on your metal. This is really important. On a good quality divider, the legs don't wobble. They are very sturdy. I have two dividers here. Both look more or less the same. They have a knob on one side of the legs here. The biggest difference is this one is longer than this one. Personally, I prefer this one, and I'm going to show you why. From this angle, you can see that this is the light on my microscope and this is the surface I'm working on. If I use the long one, you see that the knob here is hitting the light. There's no way that I can move this one freely on my surface. However, if I use the shorter one, you see that I can move it freely. Without any problem. So that's why I prefer this one, because I use a microscope. However, if you don't use a microscope, this one is very good as well. Both are very sturdy and the legs don't wobble at all. If you like my video so far, do you mind clicking the like button? And if you are clicking the subscribe button, you are the best. The second tool you will need is a scriber. I have 3 scribers here. They are for drawing lines on the metalwork to guide your hand engraving. The black one here is made of stainless steel. The silver one here is made of carbide. I mean the tip here. Is made of carbide. With these two metal ones, you can apply a lot of pressure on the tip because carbide is much harder than standard steel. That's why this one is much more expensive than the black one. With this tiny little one here, the tip is made of porcelain. It allows you to draw some very fine lines on your metal surface, and also the movement is really smooth. You are not supposed to put a lot of pressure on it because you can break the tip easily if you do that. And because you draw some very shallow lines on your metalwork with this one, if you make any mistake on the metal surface, the lines you have drawn can be removed with fine sandpaper easily. And also, because it's made of fine porcelain, it's very sturdy as well. If you use the porcelain one, I found that I only need to polish it once, maybe in a year. The next tool you need is a stainless steel ruler. Make sure to have a thin layer of foam or cork on the back of your ruler, because when you put this on top of your work, you don't want to scratch the surface of your workpiece. So this can prevent that to happen. The reason why it needs to be stainless steel is that if you use a plastic or wooden ruler, for example, when you draw lines against the edge of the ruler, it's quite easy to damage the edge because your scriber, it's much harder than the wooden or plastic ruler. And this will not happen if you use a stainless steel ruler. The next thing you need is a nail polish remover. It's for removing any oil or grease on your work surface. Sometimes if you have made some marks with permanent markers, or if you want to correct photocopy patterns that has been transferred onto your workpiece, you can also use nail polish remover to easily wipe it off. Personally, I choose the most cheapest one I can find in the market. As far as the smell doesn't go too strong, As a beginner learning hand engraving, you will need some practicing material to work with. The most common two types of practicing materials are copper or sterling silver. Personally, I prefer sterling silver because it is reusable. What I did is I found some clean sterling silver scrap, melt it down, and then rolled it out into sheets like this. This one is about 2mm thickness, so I practice on engraving on both sides of this piece. Once there was no empty space anymore, I simply melt it down, roll it out, and then I will have a brand new piece of material to work with. If you use copper the cost to recycle copper at home will be much higher than the copper itself, so it's not worth it to recycle copper in this case. The difference between practicing with copper and silver is that the hardness of copper is quite close to 9-karat yellow gold. Silver is much softer. When I first learned hand engraving, I practiced with sterling silver and I found that there is no problem. Even I got used to practicing with sterling silver, I didn't find any problem engraving 9-karat gold, 18-karat gold, or even platinum at all. So if I start again, I will still choose sterling silver to practice with. The next thing we need is Thermal Lock. Thermal Lock. Come in the form of a stick like this. The section is oval. It turns soft once it is heated up and it will solidify when it cools down to room temperature. The surface of this material looks wet and shiny when it is hot, but it will turn back to matte when it is back to room temperature. The benefit of this is it doesn't reflect light when it's holding our workpiece. When we do hand engraving, we normally look at the same piece of work for a few hours. If the material reflects light, your eyes can get tired very easily. Another good thing about this material is that it is reusable. So you can keep heating it time and time again. I don't know if this thing will expire or ever. I will let you know if it ever expires in the future, but so far I've used it for 5 years for the same piece of Thermoloc, and it's still as good as brand new. You can use this material to hold all shapes of metals. It is ideal for holding irregular-shaped items for engraving. We've talked about the practicing piece and the Thermal Lock to hold the practice piece. Next, what you need is a ball vise. Personally, this is my favorite device to hold any workpiece because it gives flexibility in positioning my workpiece in any angle. As you can see, it's really easy to move. Uh, the next tool you will need is graver. They come in many shapes and also they have been named in many numbers, let alone the ones that you can make by yourself. This can be quite confusing. As a beginner, all you need are two number 4 ornate gravers, one for engraving straight lines and the other one for curved lines. Everything is made of straight lines and curved lines, so once you have mastered using these two gravers, you will have set a solid foundation for using any other gravers. If you're going to do hand push, you will need to mount your graver onto a wooden handle like this. If you're using a pneumatic engraving machine, you will need to mount your graver into a handle like this, and then put this into a handpiece like this. This tube connects my handpiece with a pneumatic engraving machine. The machine connects to an air compressor to power this handpiece. The one I use is the Quick Change 901 handpiece. It's from GRS. I have the link in the description below. If you are interested, you can have a look. Personally, I prefer using the pneumatic engraving machine rather than just do hand push because in this case the machine does the pushing job for me. All I do is just to guide the direction for my engravers. I find it much easier and quicker as well. It doesn't matter if you're going to do hand push or you are going to use a pneumatic engraving machine to do the push, you will always need to polish your graver from time to time because you want to keep your graver as shiny as possible. How well your graver is polished is going to transfer onto the surface of your workpiece. So this brings to the next thing you need is something to polish your gravers. You can either use a graver hone. With the sharpening system, or you can use two diamond wheels like this. The graver hone with the sharpening system costs about $2,000. These two together, I believe it's about $100. Personally, I prefer these two diamond wheels. Because it's much quicker. The gray one is much coarser than the yellow one. What you do is to use the gray one to shape your gravers and then use the yellow one to give your graver a mirror polish. What you need next is lubricant and cutting fluid. This is to reduce friction and to keep your graver cool during the engraving process. In my case, I use baby oil. So what I do is to collect a facial oil bottle like this. It comes with a handy pipette. Once I finish the product, I gave it a good rinse and then put the baby oil inside. So whenever needed, I just apply the baby oil onto the graver or the area where I need to engrave. You will need to have some sandpaper as well because during the engraving process, your graver will have lifted the edge of your metal. That's why you need to smooth the surface with the sandpaper You cannot choose a very coarse one, otherwise you will just take off what you have engraved. I would say, um, 800 grit will do the job. Lastly, with all the tools and materials ready, you will need to have a magnifier to see all the details during the hand engraving process. You can either use a headband magnifier or a microscope. Personally, I prefer to use a microscope. I have another video talking about different types of microscopes. Make sure you check that out. These are all the tools, um, you will need to start learning hand engraving. If you like this video, you might also like the one here. I will see you in the next video. Bye!