Knives and engraving » custom

Engraved guitar pickup cover

Viljo Marrandi — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:36:59 +0000

When the word goes around, all kinds of strange things are wanted to be engraved. Knives, spoons, Zippos are now quite regular. And them comes someone who asks whether I could engrave something I’ve never heard about before.

This time it was electric guitar pickup cover. OK, I knew what electric guitar was, begin Queen fan myself, but I had really no idea what that cover was and what it’s used for. A change to learn and widen horizons. Now I know where it goes and additionally also how electric guitars actually work.

Anyway, here’s the engraving I came up with.

Close-up of the engraving.

This engraving posed quite a challenge. As the detail was nickel plated, it meant “no mistakes allowed”, because when I’d slip during engraving, there’s no way to fix the mirror finish. With non-plated metal, there’s always a chance to sand or burnish down the mistake, but that’s not possible on plated detail.

I think it came out OK.

Engraved memory sticks

Viljo Marrandi — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 07:57:45 +0000

Here are two quick engravings on memory sticks. The engraving style is called ‘piddling’, or if I want to sound expensive, then ‘double bevel’ engraving.

As these memory sticks are made from extremely soft metal, this is the only style that can be done decently on them. Can’t do any fine lines/detail on them. I drew the design on as I started to engrave, so not much preparing was needed.

Preparing to give away stuff

Viljo Marrandi — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 19:47:13 +0000

I’ve bought a few things to see whether they are engrave-able or not. If they work out well, then, note this, I’m going to give them away to my readers. For free. Yes. Really.

If I screw them up, then I’ll have a few more shooting targets, or maybe someone would still want them.

The only thing I haven’t figured out yet is how to give them away. The simplest would be to pick random commenter from people who’ve commented on the ‘Give Away’ post, but maybe someone has a better idea?

OK, here they are. ‘Top’ things are 1GB iPod Shuffle and pqi 2GB memory stick.

Actually I bought Shuffle just to test whether this aluminium is engrave-able and how the effect looks like. If it is good enough I’ll probably buy iPod Nano for one of the next give aways. I have a few spoons too, but not sure which of them are made of metal that can be engraved.

Engraved spoon

Viljo Marrandi — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:56:42 +0000

Back on the road again. I’ve been really busy last month or so with other things, so there wasn’t much going on in knife making and engraving.

So to get myself going again I grabbed a spoon from kitchen and did a quick engraving on in.

A little step-by-step.

Design done, transferred and ready to engrave:

Engraving and shading completed:

Background relieving – used rotary tool for that:

Background stippled:

Here’s full view:

All in all it took me about 3 hours to finish, including design.

Engraved silver slimline Zippo

Viljo Marrandi — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 06:56:48 +0000

Here’s an engraved silver Zippo I did for a customer. As this was my first project where I had to engrave on sterling silver I had some doubts about it, but it turned out just great. Sterling was very well engrave-able and result looks really good. Design was submitted by customer, all I had to do was to engrave it.

Hand engraved silver Zippo

Hand engraved Zippo in a box

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