The Secrets of Handmade Jewelry Engraving

Hand engraved jewelry is still used by many jewelers as a way to attract customers. After all, nowadays, with the development of technology, more and more jewelers are pursuing high efficiency. At this time, hand-carving has instead become a selling point. In terms of the current level of technology, the highest level of engraving is a laser engraving. But laser engraving is inferior to hand engraving in engraving rich layers of patterns. Because laser engraving is only limited to plane engraving, and manual engraving can achieve the degree of laser engraving can not match.

What is jewelry engraving?

First, we need to understand what exactly jewelry engraving is. In a nutshell, the definition of jewelry engraving can be broken down into two categories.

1. Jewelry engraving is the process of engraving a design on the surface of a piece of jewelry.
2. Jewelry engraving is the realization of a print based on an already engraved pattern

What are the historical origins of jewelry engraving?

The craft of engraving can be traced back as far as ancient Rome. The earliest significance of engraving was to carve and print on metal or wooden plates. Later, engraving was used in the jewelry industry. Only at that time, most of the engraving was text.

What is hand carving?

We have made a very clear introduction about what is jewelry engraving earlier. Next we are going to have a detailed look at the definition of hand engraving. Hand engraving is the process of using a variety of engraving knives of different shapes and sizes to carve a variety of designs into a material. Generally, the carving knives are mounted on wooden handles and the length of the knives is usually very long. So you can carve the pattern you want on the material according to your needs.

How do you do jewelry engraving at home?

In fact, jewelry engraving needs to pay attention to a very large number of details in practice, but due to the limited space of this post, so only a general introduction. If you have more details you want to know in the process of reading, then you can search for related keywords on the Internet, to find some pictures or videos may be more able to answer your questions.

1. Overall design: before you carve your jewelry, it's a good idea to have an accurate and complete description of what you have in mind (although you may make some subsequent changes as well, it's still essential to plan ahead). For example, whether you want to carve a ring, necklace or earrings. Then what kind of engraving you want on the jewelry, all of this is subject to detailed analysis. Engraving on the inside of a ring is more difficult. So it is important to analyze in detail the size of the pattern of the ring and what kind of complexity of the pattern.
2. Finding the right raw materials. You can just go to the market and buy unengraved jewelry and then work on it yourself. If it is you who want to try your hand at making a ring or any other jewelry by yourself, then you can find some tutorials on jewelry making for novices from the internet to study them carefully.
3. Start by roughly engraving the pattern you want on the metal. When you are doing the actual engraving, as a novice you may find it difficult to make a perfect pattern on the metal directly from your imagination. So, it is best that you use a small marker or pencil to trace a rough outline on the metal first. This will help you to minimize the mistakes that you may make when carving subsequently.
4. Formal engraving is done on metal using engraving tools. When engraving jewelry, you can choose the right engraving tool according to your needs. If you enjoy handcrafting more, then you can choose the most primitive engraving tool. If you want to save time and effort, you can choose a special jewelry engraving machine as your "working partner". If you find that you have made some mistakes in the process of engraving, then you can manually use abrasive paper or use a special grinding machine to grind off the place where you have made mistakes.
5. Repeatedly compare your draft drawing as well as the actual carved pattern. This is the step where you need to keep on tinkering with the pattern you have carved. You may need to spend a long time on this step, but please save enough patience. After all, slow work makes perfect work.

What are some of the more common engraving tools?

Generally speaking, engraving knives can be divided into two types according to their different functions, one is a scraper, and the other is an engraving knife.

1. Scraper: During the engraving process, it is inevitable that metal shavings will appear. Metal debris will hinder the accuracy of the actual engraving. So the role of the scraper is to scrape off the metal debris in the engraving process.
2. Engraving Knives: While the role of the engraving knife as a tool is pretty obvious. But if you really want to break it down, engraving tools can be divided into many different types. And their respective roles are also very different. Here are a few common examples. First is the flat head engraving tool, its main role is to be used for the initial contour cutting. Second is the ball head engraving tool, its role is like its name, can make the surface of the engraved material to form a hemisphere. It is particularly suitable for curved surface engraving. Finally, there is the V-shaped engraving knife, which can be used to engrave a variety of different fonts, and can also control the depth of the engraving pattern.

Well, this is all about hand engraved jewelry, if you are interested, try to make your own personalized jewelry.