new member from south central Pa.

[Jim Snowdon]

Just registered today. I have been following the site and finally got tired of not being able to post questions or see the photos referred to. I have done little hand engraving, but have been interested in learning since reading James E. Meek's The Art Of Engraving.

I have been a self employed coining die engraver for 15 years, producing the bulk of my engraving with Gorton pantographs, an Augenstein copying engraver, and some hand work. I'm presently attempting to bring a small cnc machine up to speed, but soon found that the learning curve is brutal.

I am looking forward to starting to learn about hand engraving and eventually incorporate this skill into my shop.

[Roger Bleile]

Jim,

Welcome to the forum. Your background in coining dies is an interesting one. I am familiar with the Gorton but have never heard of an Augenstein copying engraver. Does it do modeled relief? When I worked at a place that made coining dies we used the Gorton to remove all the background and modeled the figures by hand.

Roger

[Steve Lindsay]

Welcome Jim :waving:
Similar to Roger, I also am interested in the coining and dies. I did a search on google for Augenstein and found one at the goldmachinery site. It is a small picture though. Is it similar to a Gorton?

Welcome again, I hope the forum is helpful as you are learning to hand engrave.
Steve

[Jim Snowdon]

Thanks guys for your warm welcome. The augenstein does the same job as the janvier, which is producing 3-D bas relief images on steel die blanks from a sculpted master, usually at about a 6 to 1 ratio. Yes, it's the same machine as on the Gold Machinery site. (I noticed they have 2 other machines listed as well.) I have photos of my augenstein as well as the operating manual if anyone is interested.

My Gorton machine is a P1-2 which engraves 2-D and can produce modelled dies by varying the engraving depth. Looking forward to visiting the Engraving forum often.

[Tom Maringer]

Hi Jim:
Sounds like you've been doing it a lot longer than I have! I have spent most of my time and effort working on the press tooling side of the coin equation, and my engraving needs to catch up.

[ron]

hi Jim and welcome to the forum , here you will get and see a lot of info on hand engraving , every one on this forum is willing to tell and show you any thing you need to know ,, also i too live in s, central pa. just west of Harrisburg , give me a call and stop by my show and i will show you every thing you need to know .. ron p

[Jim Snowdon]

Thanks again all for the warm welcome and encouraging comments.

Ron, I'll take you up on your shop tour offer as soon as my workload slows. You are also welcome to tour my shop. I'm looking forward to both.

Tom, I have a reprint of a highly technical booklet on hobbing full of charts and illustrations which may be of interest to you. If so let me know and I'll fire off a copy to you.

[ron]

hi Jim .. thanks for the invite i would be very interested in seeing how you do your coins and learn some thing , let me know when and how to get to you .. ron p

[Tom Maringer]

Hi Jim: I would be very interested in the hobbing article. It has been difficult to research this area. I've sent you a PM with my mailing address. Are you doing the press-work also or concentrating on dies? Be well! Tom M.

[Jim Snowdon]

I don't do any press work and know more about making the dies than striking them. I would like to know more about press work since it is the yang to the die's ying. I'll post some examples of my work when I get a chance.

No PM yet; I'll keep watching for it.

[Tom Maringer]

Interesting Jim! Perhaps we could do some collaborative efforts. I have about eighty gazillion ideas for cool projects, and the diemaking is always the bottleneck. (I've sytematically eliminated the other bottlenecks... fixtures, blanking etc) I have an image library of some five thousand vintage hubs with images of just about anything imaginable. I am using either the Gorton P1-3 or reverse letter stamps for inscriptions... neither of which is looking as good as I want them to. The problem is paring all those ideas down to something doable and with enough market potential to cover costs. And of course, keeping it esoteric enough that the "big boys" don't just take the idea and job it out to the Chinese to mass produce at 1/10 the cost.

[Jim Snowdon]

Tom, Sent you a PM today. I did lose most of my die work to China starting a couple years ago. Now that the dollar is devalued and shipping costs are up I'm seeing the work slowly coming back to me. We should get together on a speculative die making venture. It would be mostly just labor invested by each of us with some rewards possible.

Lettering is my strongest suite. We have over 2000 fonts on file as well as font identification software and hundreds of cd's of art on file. Guess I'll have to post some photos of my work to show some examples. Hope everyone is having a happy and safe 4th.

[Marc Williams]

Jim and Ron,

Jim, welcome to the board.. and for the both of you, I live in the Northeast part of PA.. I would love to have some kind of get together someday to see what you guys are up to.. I am a custom jeweler learning to engrave, so anyone I can meet that know more than me... I' m all for it..

Marc

[ron]

hi Marc.. that is a good idea , and if there is any body else that would like to get together let us know , we could meet at least once a month at one of the local restaurants and talk engraving and answer any questions , this wed. i will be at a knife meeting in Lewisburg Pa. at the Country Cupboard resturant and if you want stop by and say hello i will have some of my work with me , the meeting is open to anybody .. ron p.