Engravings - how to get gold into a gun:

[pisto]

could take a picture at the IWA gun show, from a engravers presentation pice, showing how they make Gold pices into the real expensive hunting rifles.
This is used sometimes beside the engravings if the owner has still enough money!
there are 2 ways, 1rst on the top line and 2nd on the other line.
The other pic showing some Ferlach hunting rifles, already engraved.

[Dean]

Neat stuff. Looks like they chisle a little overhang to hold the gold in. I wonder how many recievers it takes to get good at it.

[pisto]

Trainees took normally 4 years in the gun school in Ferlach/Austria at the HTBL Ferlach, ore you need 3,5 years as a regular trainee - most of them change theyr profession because it is to hard job and to less money.

[Dean]

These days I think it is easier to perform engraving using a CNC mill or CNC laser.

One particular program makes it easy to do even "one off" designs. Artcam www.artcam.com, check out the site they have some neat demos. It is used by jewelers to create reliefs in rings, bracelets etc.. I have not seen it applied to gun recievers, although it would not suprize me that someone is using it this way.

This seems like a more profitable approach. I can't imaging hand engraving a font when one can select any true-type font and have the machine engrave it using a diamond tipped tool.

Purist my frown, but I think so long as the designs are unique and what the customer desires than I see nothing wrong with using CNC.

After all it's not the tools, but how good the artist is at using them.

[pisto]

Dean, youare right, some engravers use this cnc mills already, and to make it looks right, they just rework it by hand to give the correct tuch!
That is much more efficient, probably a specialist can not say wich engraving is done all the way by hand and which one is cnc milled first?
But If you find one paying hand work by getting cnc work - not recognizing it, who cares?

[wterrell]

The most impressive gold inlays that I have seen are incorporated into scenes or patterns where the entire area was worked in high relief and sparing use of gold.
You have to admire the talented eye of the master engraver.

[Dean]

Here's a good site to see some nice firearm engraving.

http://fega.com/photos/

I work at a company that makes currency sorting equipment and I get to look at alot of currency from around the world. I have often wondered how many top notch engravers there are in the world. I would not suprize me that some good engraver out there has done the currency plates for more than one country.

I guess if your a good engraver there are really only a few options, engrave guns, jewelery, or currency plates. Maybe currency engravers do guns in their spare time.

[Ron Wood]

The late Bernie Wolf of El Paso, TX, was a Master Engraver in every sense. He produced some of the finest engraved firearms in the US. I have been told that he was once a currency engraver and reportedly was visited regularly by the Treasury Department to see what he was working on after he went into firearms engraving! I had an opportunity to visit him on several occasions and it is unbelievable what he could do. The Colt emblems and lettering that he put on old single actions was so correct that they would almost defy detection by anything other than microscopic examination. He could execute perfect lettering that was so small you needed a magnifying glass to read it. I wish I could have had a firearm engraved by him before he passed away. It is amazing the skill that a gifted individual can possess.