New to forum - question

A

al.rudd

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Feb 8, 2005
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I'm new to forum and trying to figure this thing out.

My question, does any of you guys/gals do hand engraving on knife blades?

Thanks

al.rudd
 
you can buy special burrs to put into a dremmel. thats what i use. you could use a scribe (i think they have one at tks) i believe this would be harder though...but possibly more precise.
 
Unpowered hand engraving would be pretty difficult on a hardened blade, if not darned near impossible. Engraving before heat treating would be possible but the detail could be lost in the cleanup after heat treating.
 
I engrave my signature before heat treating with a normal graver. I finish my blades to 320 grit (600 grit where I'm going to be engraving) before I have them heat treated so there's less work to do afterwards that might affect the engraving. Engraving goes pretty deep, though, so it'd take quite a bit to sand it out. There exist tungsten carbide gravers that might work after heat treating but I'm not sure it'd be worth the extra trouble.

- Chris
 
Not too many here do a lot of engraving. The short answer is, yes, engraving is done on blades, sometimes extensively. It is typically done before heat treating. One should then have them heat treated in an atmosphere-controlled furnace or a salt pot to minimize scaling (oxidation) for cleanup purposes.

You might get a much better answer asking the bunch of engravers that hang out in the Fine Embellishment forum over at KnifeNetwork:

http://www.knifenetwork.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=46

Hope that helps. Welcome to BladeForums Shoptalk. If you would, share a little about your wood carving. I'm trying to learn relief carving for handles.
 
Nick Wheeler is taking an engraving course right now ! Ask him stuff when he gets back.I've done a little engraving ,the hardest material was a rifle receiver. That was as tough as I want so I kept the design simple and for much of it I used a carbide graver.The very fine engraving you see on shotguns and knife blades was done before hardening. And my engraving was done 'by hand ' using a graver and hammer .Much of the engraving you see today is done with a power graver which is like a miniature jack hammer.
 
I have a hard enough time signing my name. I could finish concrete better with my baldhead than what I could ever expect to do with an engraver. Al, Is Redstone Arsenal still open?
 
Thank you, Al! I shall bookmark it and read there. Appreciate the link. :)
 
Yes, Redstone is still open and is very busy. A lot of Army weapons research and NASA keeps us all in work.

I have ordered a Turbo Carver, mostly for gunstock carving but thought I would try my hand at some engraving. Who knows, maybe some part-time denistry. I wonder if my wife will let me practice on her?

al.rudd
 
Al, I got training to be a combat missle system's repair person back in 1968 at Redstone. I took an extra year for the training thinking it would keep me out of Nam. Well the way the Army worked back then the left hand didn't know what the right was doing. I still ended up for more training, this time OJT in Vietnam as a mortar man.

On the Turbo Carver, afew people I know that have one say they just don't have enough power for steel.
 
Ray, the ultra-highspeed carvers have very little torque, you are quite correct. That is both their boon and bane. Yes, they will stop very easily if pushed into the steel. On the other hand, they don't jump out of the cut real easy and go skidding across the workpiece. That is one of their selling points.

To date, my experience has been that they will still remove metal much faster than I want in places I don't want metal removed. :(

I have a 1/4 HP Foredom for hogging and a "pen" for detail. I'd like to get a micromotor cutter for that "in between" some day.
 
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