Ornamental Hand Engraving Samples

Several friends have asked to see my Ornamental Hand Engraving Samples from the class I took last week at New Approach. We worked on 2 by 2 inch squares of copper sheet metal. The patterns above and below are meant to go on a ring, but it’s best to first practice this technique on flat instead of a curved surface.

Notice the pattern to the right has little berries on it, I liked that one a lot!

On the piece above I drew some circles to represent the sides of a ring and did a wheat leaf pattern up the left side and a 1/2 wheat leaf up the right. These still need a great deal of practice.

I did enjoy making flowers. The one in the center (the biggest one) is my favorite! I slipped with the graver and turned that slip into the stem of the flower.

We started practicing scroll patterns.

This flower design was an image transfer that we then traced with a scribe on the metal and then engraved.

The plate above is flowers our teacher engraved. He drew names and let us each pick our favorite plate. Luckily my name was drawn last so I got everything that was left. (2 plates and an inlay sample!) : )

My sample of this pattern is the first picture. Compare the two and see how much cleaner the teacher’s lines are.

On the last day of class we were shown how to inlay one metal into another. This is copper into brass, and then our teacher engraved the copper. I thought it was really cool!

Engraving frankly is hard to explain without really showing what we did and showing the tools. It is difficult to master but truly a lot of fun.

Have a happy day!