Knives and engraving » hand engraving

Engraved damasteel knife

Viljo Marrandi — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:11:27 +0000

This knife has been in the making for quite some time now. Actually, it’s been waiting queue for engraving most of that time. The knife itself was finished about a month ago, but different and more urgent projects had to be completed before I could engrave it.

The blade is made of damasteel, which is kind of stainless damascus made in Sweden. This knife was the first one where I’ve used that steel and I really-really like how it came out. The pattern on the steel is very fine and extremely beautiful. Now I want to make all knives from that steel, just need to find customers who can afford it . Any takers?

Engraving itself took 10 hours, design was about 3-4h.

Engraved damasteel knife

Engraving close-up

Engraving Zippo video

Viljo Marrandi — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:00:55 +0000

I was in a finishing phase of Zippo engraving when I had an idea to try out time-lapse function on my camera. So I still had a chance to film shading, sharpening and stippling phases of engraving.

Enjoy!
Vimeo better quality version: Engraving Zippo.

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.

I need ideas for an ad campaign

Viljo Marrandi — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:11:31 +0000

Here’s your chance to help me.

This autumn I want to do a small advertising campaign to promote my hand engraving and custom knife business. Currently I have 3 things in the list I want to make for this campaign:

iPod nano with engraved back (maybe even a pair – black & pink, for him and for her)
Silver Zippo with full hand engraving
Engraved custom knife

Campaign purpose is to promote hand engraving and custom knives, at the same time drive traffic to my blog and website, generate links and get up in Google ranks. I want to make it a campaign in disguise – there will be a competition and winners will get these prizes.

Now here’s what I need. Ideas for which competition(s) to make. That competition should also be something that’s useful. Be it something to do with marketing (best ideas what and where to market), products (what cool things to engrave, like iPods) or whatever.

How to make this campaign more… um, viral? I want it to spread. I will probably do a photo session (hire a model and the whole shebang) and a short video for it. More ideas are very welcome, also about photo and video!

People who will comment this post and have good ideas will get a small something from me. Can’t say right now what it is, as it’s creation is in very early phases. But it’s coming. Two sides with about 15mm diameter.

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Follow me @ Twitter: vilts
Website: Custom knives and hand engraving

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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Now you can follow me at Twitter, my name there is vilts. Usually I update it once or twice a day, you’re welcome to follow me there.