Guide to Hand Engraved Jewelry

Now more and more people like to carve their own jewelry, but many people will be very puzzled from which aspect of the knowledge to start learning is better. Although hand-carved jewelry with the development of technology gradually declined, but now there are many jewelers will be hand-carved as their own characteristics to sell jewelry or private customization services. Most jewelers now engrave on metal. Although metals like gold and silver are the more common metals used in jewelry making, this post will tell you more details about metal engraving.

What is jewelry engraving?

Before we learn how to do jewelry engraving, with the need to have a detailed understanding of the concept of jewelry engraving first. According to the current information, the definition of jewelry engraving can be described as follows.

Jewelry engraving refers to engraving tools that leave a variety of designs on the surface of the jewelry.

How did the craft of jewelry engraving develop?

If we are going to talk about jewelry engraving, then we have to first mention engraving as an art that has been around for a long time. Engraving refers to the use of different engraving tools to leave different engraving patterns on various engraving materials, such as words, numbers and other content. The craft of engraving first appeared during the ancient Roman period. But at that time, engraving was not used in jewelry. Most of the people at that time were carving on wooden boards or metal, and then using the metal or wooden boards as a tool for printing. Later, people gradually applied the skill of engraving to jewelry engraving. However, at this time, very few people would carve patterns on jewelry, they all carved words. By now, the form of jewelry engraving is more and more, you can even see relief patterns on rings.

What is hand carving?

In the above, we have already known that above is jewelry engraving, and then back to the topic of our article – hand engraved jewelry. By putting hand engraving and jewelry engraving together, we will be able to easily understand what hand engraved jewelry is. Hand engraving is the use of a variety of engraving knives of different sizes on the engraved material. However, nowadays very few people use handmade engraving tools for engraving, as it is indeed too inefficient. Now most people will choose to use some of the carving machine to replace the hand-carved tool, and pneumatic engraver is currently on the market more popular kind of engraving machine. There are many professionals will choose it as their “working partner”.

How can you engrave your own jewelry at home?

It should be noted here that there are a lot of operational details to learn about the process of jewelry engraving. So here can only introduce some general process is like. If you have any doubts while reading this, you can go to the website and search for relevant pictures or even videos for further understanding.

1. General Design: First you need to start with a general idea of what you want to carve. You can sketch out your idea on paper. You can also use professional computer software to draw the pattern.

2. Initial engraving: Take out the jewelry you want to engrave and secure it. If you are engraving a ring, you may choose to use a ball vise to hold the ring in place. Fixing the jewelry will not only make it easier for you to carve the jewelry, but will also reduce the possibility of hurting your hands during the carving process. Then use a small marker or pencil to draw the design you want to engrave on the jewelry.

3. Formal engraving: take out your engraving tool or engraving machine, according to the pattern you have just drawn on the jewelry for formal engraving. If you are in the process of engraving, there are some small errors, it does not matter. You can use sandpaper or sanding machine to polish off the engraving error (of course, the premise of using this method is that the depth of your engraving pattern is not very deep. If the depth is very deep, sanding won’t help.)

4. Repeated retouching: Keep comparing your carving with the one you are carving, and make constant adjustments and retouching until your carving is constantly close to the original draft.

What kind of engraving tool should I choose?

As mentioned above, if you choose an engraving machine, it will come with different engraving bits. If you don’t understand how the different engraving bits work, there’s no way you’ll be able to carve a particularly satisfying piece. So, here I’m going to introduce you to a few different engraving bits and what their actual function is.

1. Scraper: In the process of metal engraving, there is metal debris is a very normal thing. But too much metal debris is going to hinder the normal engraving process. Therefore, there is a need for a professional tool to hang off those excess metal shavings. A scraper is a professional and essential tool.

2. A variety of different types of carving knives: there are actually many types of carving knives. But there are only a few that are more commonly used. Next, I’ll introduce you to their names and what they actually do. The first is the V-shaped engraving knife, V-shaped engraving knife is mostly used to engrave text on the jewelry, and can control the depth of the engraving pattern. There is also a plane engraving knife, plane engraving knife is used for large area engraving tool. In addition to the above mentioned engraving knives, there are also round engraving knives and oval engraving knives. In fact, apart from the above mentioned types of engraving knives, there are many more engraving tools available in the market with different features.

This post has given you a general overview of the concept as well as the process of hand engraving jewelry, and the tools that you may need to use while engraving. If your confusion has been resolved, then take action now and make your own jewelry!