hilt engraving pattern transfers.

[goldsaberwarrior]

I'm sure you can guess by my title that i'm looking for some help with engraving on the hilt. since some of you have experience with engraving stuff I'm hoping some of you may have some tricks to your patterns you use and otherwise. basically what i want to know is, what is the best way in some of your opinions to transfer patterns to the hilt to engrave.

[Arkanjel]

Try die-cut (or hand cut) adhesive vinyl. You can peel out the pattern and engrave the negative spaces. It will also help protect the areas you don't want to engrave.

[WookieeGunner]

Don't know how well it will work on a round surface, but a lot of the DIY PCB guys use laser toner: http://www.instructables.com/id/PCB-...laser-printer/

[Batosai]

I currently used PnP blue like rougue9607 on his satele saber (http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com...ghlight=satele).
But I used it for saltwater etching and not engraving. The amount of detail you can easily transfer onto the aluminium is amazing

[Sevinzol]

Batosai brings up a good point (and a great link)
Are you Engraving or Etching?
If you are truely engraving (like with a demel) then you can simply put your design on any peice of paper and glue it onto the hilt and trace thru it with a bur bit of your choice. I would recomend tracing around your design with a knife, once you have it on the piece. The line will help keep the bur from crawling into areas you don't want to engrave. Engraving can take a long time if you have a big area to do. Buy a flex-shaft for your dremel, it will cut diown on the hand cramps and give you better control.

If on the other hand if you are actually talking about etching then you need a resist. You can etch using chemicals or by sand blasting. If you want to try sand blasting a resist can be as simple as masking tape or glued on paper. Once you have your resist on I think you could find a shop that would do it for you. they might have recomendations about resists as well.

Chemical etching tends to be cheaper (no expensive eqipment and you can do it in the sink) but it does have a drawback in that the chemical will start to undermine the resist (leaving a dove tail cross section) if you have very thin lines and etch too deep you can actually break off the design or worse eat clear through the piece leaving a hole.

Can't wait to see what you have in mind

[madmaxx]

go the etching route as a trial.... you would be surprised at the finished product....

[goldsaberwarrior]

Been reading up on the etching links that were provided and I do indeed like what I see. The only problem I have at the moment is that I don't have access to a printer that would work for me it looks like. of course I could probably buy one if need be I would just need to know a good cheap model to buy.

I planned on doing an actual engraving with a dremel. I've got a basic engraving kit for right now. I'm looking to engrave a saying in hebrew on my saber. the space i'm working with is rather limited but I'm sure I can work with it.

J52 gold.jpg

P19 green.jpg

For the single hilt i'm looking to engrave alone the blade holder and for the double blade on the 2 female sections of the hilt. In all i'm looking at around 3 inches of space at max in all cases. I want this to be perfect because the single hilt i'm doing in honor of a bro who passed away. the double blade in honor of another friend.

I had thought about something along the lines of an ink transfer of some kind to get the basic pattern on the saber and then just engraving over the ink. I hadn't thought about the going over it with a knife thing as well. hope this clears up any confusion.

[Batosai]

I tried engraving a few times, but it really needs practise. I wasn't able the make smooth lines.
A week ago I tried the saltwater etching for the first time and I am very pleased.
_20140125_174122.jpg
(these are about the length of a finger, rather small)
you can even draw your pattern on the hilt with a marker.
so you could print out your design, cut it out, wrap it around the hilt and follow it's lines with the marker (I think this would also work for the engraving)

but these are just my 2cents

[Sevinzol]

oh i like those batosai

[goldsaberwarrior]

Folks have given me some different methods to try. I definitely like what i see there Batosai and that may end up being the route I go. I'm going to try some different methods on a sink tube I have for practice to see which one I like the best starting with print paper and x-acto knife. The only thing i worry about with the etching is access to a laser printer or expensive equipment. I'll figure out a good method and hopefully it'll turn out nice.