|
Andy, your almost right on. I first cut a V cut a little over half the width of my beading tool. I under cut the V cut as if you were going to inlay a piece of gold wire. Instead of hammering the gold wire flat....I take the beading tool and hammer one bead after the other. I try to keep the wire half the depth of the V groove so there will not be much clean up. When you hammer the bead there normally is a fair amount of flair gold around the bead. I clean this up with a flat graver made from wear hardened nickel silver. I hammer the wire flat and then for the chisel....this of course keeps you from scratching the steel around the bead. When that is done, and by the way.... the beading inlay is the last thing your do to the engraving, then I take a very, very fine brass jewelers brush and briskly brush the whole piece. This gets any excess fine gold flaring from around the beads and burnishes the gold. I am not sure if this is the was Julie does her beading or not I do know that it is hard to hammer the gold flush and get consistent gold beads....I just do it all in one operation...one bead after the other in a straight operation....seems to work OK.
By the way, a very nice job on the knife above....beautiful.
The gold inlay in the background was not hard....just time consuming. I thought about using gold foil....too thin. I used thirty gage wire and hammered it flat with a polished hammer on a hardened plate. I then placed it over the relieved background and with a small rounded hammer in the Lindsay Graver....hammered and burnished it into place. As you can tell from the photo the background has to be cut fairly deep. I use the same tool as explained above, like the one in the drawing.
Kerry:
You are correct....for doing fine delicate work I have found that the four cutting edges do a terrific job. It also enables me to get into those very tight areas between the leaves. Hope this answers your question.....let me or Andy know if you have more.
Andy, thanks for the post. Ron...Thanks for your cherished compliments....I too, love your work.
Jim
|