A while back I was playing around making some punches and came up with the idea of ants. The first ones are those shown outlined in red, in intaglio style – I think that’s the proper term, they are sunk completely into the surface? Then, I came up with the idea of using those first “positive” image punches to create a second set of punches with a “negative” image – hence the ants shown outside the red. I like the second set of ants a lot better. The ant outlined in yellow is engraved, not punched. I’ve used ants in my work before, pyrographed (burned) on wood knife handles.
This practice piece is the remains of a thick copper bar. It’s just under 4 inches long (98mm for you metric folks). The punches I made from 1080 carbon steel, hardened and tempered. There are three punches, a teardrop shaped one for the abdomen, and two round ones, a small one for the center two dots, and a larger for the head. You can see the shapes of the punches in the copper. I used a tiny chisel for the legs, made similar to the punches. The chisel cuts copper pretty fast, so just use a couple light hammer taps. I used some gun blue I had on hand to darken the copper, then buffed off most from the surface.
To make the “negative” punches, I heated the punch blank tip to bright orange and used the corresponding “positive” punch to punch down into the hot metal, leaving a dent like the ant shapes. Then filed and ground to the edges of the dent, leaving a sharp edge. Heat, quench, temper (425 degrees F for one hour) and then used to make the ants.
These punches will work fine for most non-ferrous metals (NOT titanium!), but I don’t think they are tough enough for steel. You would have to drive them into steel pretty hard to get enough depth – I’m not willing to risk my new toys to find out.
I plan to use these previously made punches for the gold inlaid ants on the miseretto, however, the center portion of the ants above leaves much to be desired. To correct the problem with using a small “dot” punch twice, I’m going to make a new one that will match how real ants look.
Above is a real carpenter ant, note that the center section is a narrow teardrop shape, not two little round dots.
To start, I scrounged up a small sliver of 1080 carbon steel leftover from my knifemaking, and lightly forged it into shape, above. This piece is about 3.25 inches long and 3/16 inch square. I’d like it about an inch longer, but it is what it is.
I engraved the shape of the ant middle section into the end of the bar, and used my NSK micromotor grinder (under my microscope) and my smallest carbide ball shaped burr to carve the angular engraved cuts more rounded. Then, using larger burrs, I carved the outside down to the edges of the interior cuts, as seen above.
Here’s a picture taken through the microscope, sorry for the lousy focus, I had to hand hold the camera… You can see the edges are fairly sharp, and the interior is dished into the surface.
Here’s a side view of the punch – I relieved the sides back a bit more from the previous images. If you look at the lead block surface above the punch, you can see a test ant I stamped using two of the old punches and the new center section punch. I use soft lead here, because the punch hasn’t been hardened and would probably be damaged using it in harder non-ferrous metals. I’m happy with how it works. Note how you can make the ants a little more expressive by arranging the body parts in a curve, rather than a straight line.
Here, I’m heating the the end of the punch to critical temperature (an orange color for 1080 steel). I used a magnet to determine when critical temperature was been reached, because the steel becomes non-magnetic at critical temp.
Above, I quenched the red hot steel in a small catfood can of beeswax. This will harden the steel punch, and, according to engraver tradition, is a slow enough quench to remove some of the glass-brittle hardness that normally comes from quenching carbon steel. We’ll see…
Here, I’ve attempted to take a picture of the business ends of the various punches (sorry for the terrible image). The two on the left are the “positive” punches I discussed earlier, and used to make the negative shaped dimples in the end of red hot punches. The one in the center is a small sharp chisel used to cut the legs, and the three on the right are the negative image punches I’ll be using for my gold inlaid ants. The new punch is the middle of the three on the right.
Here they are viewed from the side, in the same order as above.
And here they are again, along with my three favorite hammers for this type of work.
And, above, here is the reason for all this madness. This is my first inlaid 24 karat gold ant, here done on a practice “hobo nickel.” The two little dots used for the middle of the ant prompted me to make the new punch (along with a bit of nagging from my girls…)
