4 hours ago, Alan Evans said:

Is Ivan Bailey still working? He used to do hammer engraving.

Alan

Looking at the hands in the back right of the image and the size of the clamp-to-bench screw that looks like a miniature or a model. Any idea of the actual size?

Alan

No, sorry, can only guess that it is some sort of display or museum. I get a lot of eastern european blacksmithing stuff in my facebook account, mainly one off pictures most are amazing works of art that require hundred of hours work. No idea who the authors are.  

2 hours ago, Marc1 said:

Is Ivan Bailey still working? He used to do hammer engraving.

Sadly, Ivan passed away in 2013, shortly before the ABANA reunion in Lumpkin, Georgia.

1 hour ago, John McPherson said:

Sadly, Ivan passed away in 2013, shortly before the ABANA reunion in Lumpkin, Georgia.

I am sorry to hear that. I met him first and marvelled at his hammer graving at the Hereford conference '79 '80?

Alan

Patrick Hastings does some pretty exquisite work on tsubas and other furniture for Japanese style swords.  He teaches a few classes.  He also makes a few tools, mostly sold to his students.  He uses a variety of techniques but chisel carving seems to be dominant in his work.  You can find him on Facebook.

We have a guy in at work this week engraving a new inscription onto an old church bell. He's doing all his work with hammer and chisels. Talking to him today he said that he apprenticed at a college to learn the craft but there's very little work out there for him these days. His day job is making machine tool dies for the production of sheet metal packaging (think tobacco tins and the like).

 

Big gun doc is right.  Custom rifles and shotguns from the "big boy's" in Britain and Spain have their own in-house engravers.  The whole "point" of gun making at that level is to deliver the best regardless of cost.   

http://www.purdey.com/heritage/the-workshop/

On 2/6/2017 at 11:33 PM, Marc1 said:

No, sorry, can only guess that it is some sort of display or museum. I get a lot of eastern european blacksmithing stuff in my facebook account, mainly one off pictures most are amazing works of art that require hundred of hours work. No idea who the authors are.  

I think that it's a jeweler's vise.

Chris John has some beautiful examples of hammer and chisel work posted in the axes,hatchets,  hawks section. 

On ‎2‎/‎6‎/‎2017 at 2:52 PM, Daswulf said:

Frank, those are mind blowing. I'd love to see all of the details. Even the one close up picture is keeping me busy. WOW.

 

Daswulf, Another view... 

 

Thank you Frank. And again, Wow.

 

On 05/02/2017 at 10:14 PM, George Geist said:

I'm inclined to believe many of them can be found in London hand engraving some of the worlds best firearms. Firms such as Purdey, Holland and Holland, Boss etc employ some of the worlds best belonging to British Jewelers Guilds. When not working on guns these guys also engrave watches and other fine jewelry.

George

 

On 07/02/2017 at 2:50 AM, Alan Evans said:

I am not quite sure about this. I am happy to be proven wrong if you know for certain.

As far as I know the gun trade and the hammer engravers are relatively separate from the horology / trophy / silver / jewellery trades. Most of the fine stuff is hand burin rather than hammer even in steel. There will obviously be a few crossovers with the shrinking of the bespoke gun trade. I have had a few projects hammer engraved by a fine craftsman in Birmingham, who trained in the gun trade there. But he was one of the few still doing it, and that was over twenty years ago.

There are not any Jewellers Guilds as such over here that I am aware of.

snip

Alan

 

Wrong wrong wrong...well at least on some counts. My apologies to George.

I have just come home from the Great British Shooting Show where I spent a pleasant few minutes chatting to a man engraving the side plate of a Holland and Holland shotgun. He turned out to be a jeweller/gold and silver smith who did mainly burin engraving, which is what he was doing on the side plate, but also some hammer and chisel engraving, exquisite work.

http://www.angusmcfadyen.uk

He was representing the Hand Engravers Association of Great Britain. He was saying that most of the production guns were now decorated by laser. He was most most miffed that it is referred to as laser engraving..."its not engraving at all!" 

https://handengravers.co.uk

I asked him about the various associations and guilds still in existence. Apart from the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, who unlike many livery companies have more than half of their liverymen active in the trade.

There is a National Association of Jewellers.

Full membership of the NAJ is for retail store businesses but they do have a category of membership for individual designers and makers. 

http://www.naj.co.uk

Alan

 

For those unfamiliar with the best of British gunmaking here are a few vids folks might find interesting:

http://horseshoersforum.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/488-british-best/

On 2/3/2017 at 5:31 PM, Glenn said:

Does anyone do hammer and chisel engraving?

Or had it fallen into the "lost art" category due to time and cost?

 

Um, not to point out the obvious, but Baltimore Knife and Sword does a LOT of hand engraving on their special builds for their Man At Arms: Reforged YouTube series. They have a Russian fellow on their team, who was also on Forged in Fire, named Ilya, that does *much* hand engraving.