Carole Lockwood

We started our day by dividing ourselves into two groups. Those to start with hand engraving and those to experiment with the powered engraving systems.
I decided to start with hand engraving with Phil as I lack confidence in this area and wanted to improve my skills. We started by looking at the problems that we encountered and how we could overcome them.

Doing this as a group was very beneficial as all suggestions and approaches were considered.

One of my problems was catching the edge of the design with the back edge of the graver when cutting down the centre of a piece to be
enamelled. This was overcome by working within the centre of a  reasonable size of washer placed over the metal to be cut, thus protecting the edge. Another good tip was using micromesh to help polish the bottom edge of a graver that is to be used for giving a bright cut texture under enamel.