Will: Here's how I do the carving/texturing.
I finish the overall profile of the handle or whatever it is that I'm going to carve/texture. Next, using a colored pencil or grease pencil, I freehand draw (usually a bunch of times before I'm happy with it) the design I want. I then go to my GRS 850 rotary tool, and using a 1mm round carbide burr I gently outline the design. I will go over the outline several times, increasing the depth of the cut with each lite pass. Once the outline is complete, I use riffler files (in the cut(s) I made with the burr) to ensure the lines are smooth and clean. Once that is done, I will usually lightly buff everything just to make sure I don't have any stray dull spots or marks where I might have slipped while filing.
I tend to remove the background so that its slightly lower than the surrounds material (the area that will later be textured). For this, I use an "el-cheapo" harbor freight pencil die grinder, with a carbide burr. Once all the background is removed to a fairly even depth, I then look it over once again, to ensure there are not stray marks or scratches on the item. Once thats taken care of, its time to complete the texturing. For this its back to the 850 rotary tool and, depending on how fine or course I want the texture to be, I use a larger or smaller round carbide burr. This is where some massive time consumption comes in. I'm looking through a lighted mangnifier lens, and its just repeated touches on the surface you want textured. The texturing of the blackwood alone, on that bowie handle, comsumed about 4 hours.
Theres a degree of learning curve involved, but for the most part its just taking your time and being patient.
One final thing to watch....once you THINK your done, move to a strong light source and rotate the item and look at it closely...most of the time you will see what appear as shiny spots, or something that looks like "glitter" on the item. Those are tiny spots that you missed with the burr, and you need to go back over them. If you leave them, it looks like a poor texturing job, and in the right light it is very eveident.
The item needs to be COMPLETELY finished before you carve or texture....you don't want to get near a buffer after the texturing is done...all it will do is load up the texture and you'll never get it cleaned out. A hint.....If your going to wax anything that has been textured, try something like Turtlewax "Ice" liquid wax....it doesn't dry to a haze, and leaves no chalky residue when dried.
