Above, I’ve used an opaque white Sharpie™ permanent felt tip marker to make a background for my drawing, and have drawn in the legs for the first ant.

Using a small 90 degree graver, I’ve cut the legs to the depth and width I want.  The legs are especially important because they provide the “character, emotion and expression” for the ants, along with the orientation and relationship of the body segments.

Above, I’ve added undercuts on both sides of the channels I engraved for the legs.  I’ve used a small, symmetrical flat chisel and just punched them in.  I leave a little gap between each undercut, to help keep the wire from “crawling” along the channel as I inlay it.  I’m using a brass punch with roughened face to do the pounding in of the 24 karat gold wire.  I roughen the brass punch by tapping it vertically down on a fine grit diamond graver sharpening lap (wheel).

Here’s the gold inlaid into the legs.  I’ve punched it down pretty well with the brass punch, and have sort of levelled it off by additional punching.  This takes the excess round wire and expands it into gold leaf, which can easily be removed with a small scraper.

Above are the legs after scraping and a quick and dirty patina.

In order to add additional contrast between the legs and the background, I’ve gone back and engraved VERY fine lines alongside the gold inlays.  Later, when I ink the piece, these will add greatly to the appearance.

Here they are, pretty much finished.  Now to carve the remaining surfaces.

Above is the entire ant, with three folded wire inlays.

All three ants with filled inlay pockets.

I’ve used the ant punches to do the preliminary sculpting of the ants, carefully trying to align them with the (invisible) cavity edges.

Here’s a magnified version after using the punches.

Above is an ant after trimming the excess gold around the edges, followed by burnishing with steel wool.

Here is an ant after a quick patination of the shibuichi.

And an overview.  For a more detailed discussion of the inlay process, look here:  Ants Miseretto part 10 – Risk Reduction

Next, inlay the legs – that will be 18 total.  Yikes!…

Here’s a closer view, just lightly punched.  I wouldn’t be doing this if the handle scales were steel or titanium, that would probably ruin my punches.

Above, I’ve begun cutting the inlay pocket using my Lindsay Palm Control Airgraver and a small 90 degree graver.

Here I’ve excavated the pocket with the 90 degree graver and small carbide burs.  I’m striving to keep the bottom as flat as I can.

 Above are all three pockets excavated, both an overall view and a  close up.

I decided to try something new here by using a punch in my airgraver and punching the bottom of the inlay pocket flat.  I’m hoping to work harden the area locally so as to proved a better ground for the next step, cutting a forest of small burs in the bottom to help trap the inlaid gold.

Here are the tiny little lines cut into the bottom of the inlay pocket to make the forest of little burs.  I’ve also punched undercuts around the bottom edges of the inlay pocket.  If you look closely, you can see where the metal has been displaced upwards around the upper edges.  You can see more about this particular process here:  Ants Miseretto part 10 – Risk Reduction
Tomorrow, I’ll begin inlaying the gold…

Here, I’ve finished sculpting the right hand moth.

And another quick and dirty inking.  Rather than the scribble texture, I may try stippling the background.  We’ll see….

I sliced off a small piece, about two inches long, and came up with this design for a small pendant.  Then into the studio to begin.

Above is the titanium fixed to a hardwood block with pitch, the design transferred and the beginnings of the engraving.  I began with my Lindsay Palm Control Classic, with the tungsten piston for max power.  It would cut, but certainly not deeply.  Since this is to be a fully sculpted design, that simply wasn’t going to cut it (pun intended…).  So, I tried my new Nitro G20 airgraver – which worked just fine.  It is a lot more powerful than my Lindsay Classic airgraver.  However, during the course of the engraving, I did break the graver point several times, something I haven’t done in some time.  The 6ALV4 isn’t exactly a “dream” to cut.  It’s not only fairly hard, but “tough” (resistant?) as well.

Here’s the moth outlines cut, and some of the background relieved.  The 6ALV4 titanium doesn’t cut as well as mild steel or 410 or 416 stainless steel with carbide burrs and my NSK micromotor grinder either, but it is doable.

Here I’m beginning to sculpt the left wings with the NSK micromotor.

I used the Nitro G20 airgraver and a rough tipped punch to further sculpt the wings, above.  I also textured the background with my signature “scribble” texture.

And here is the result so far, with a preliminary inking.  More tomorrow…

Here’s  a close-up of it, courtesy of Steve Lindsay’s web site:  http://www.airgraver.com/Hand_Engraving_Tools_Overview.htm  This AirGraver has considerably more power available then the excellent Lindsay Classic Palm Control AirGraver I already have.  I’ll be using the Nitro G20 for heavier engraving and metal carving, as well as heavier sculpting by forging shapes with punches.  I also have a notion to eventually use it for wood carving as well, although I’ll have to figure out how to forge some carving gouges and veiners.

Of course, that means another set of gauges and controls to be added to my Lindsay Classic Palm Control AirGraver setup.  Above, you can see the major pieces involved in this plumber’s dilemma, along with my Lindsay Classic Palm Control (lower left) and the new Nitro G20 (lower right).  The G20 has a foot control, and I’m happy to see that.  I find stippling and sculpting with punches a pain (literally) with the Palm Control, since I have to hold it in an uncomfortable manner in order to activate it in sculpting mode.  The foot control on the Nitro looks like it will eliminate that problem.

Here is my solution to the Kobayashi Maru no-win plumber’s nightmare scenario… I used brass plumbing fittings available from my local Ace hardware store, and some of the supplied Lindsay pneumatic tubing.  Since I couldn’t find small enough fittings locally to fit the pneumatic tubing, I had a small stroke of brilliance and used a drill bit to drill out the inner diameter of the tubing to fit.  Since my compressor can’t make more than 90 psi, this should be fine.  A little hardwood and a Forstner drill bit, and, Eureka!  It works.  Palm Control on the left, Nitro on the right, both immediately available and downstream of the coalescing oil filter.

Now to get back to work.

And, last but not least, the glamour shot.  Now that I’ve fully broken the code on the ants, it’s on to the miseretto dagger itself.

Looking at the center leg (at 6 o’clock), I undercut the engraved groove with the small Ray Cover-style graver like a sharpened flat blade screwdriver.  Just driving it right straight in perpendicular to the axis of each leg segment, with the graver tilted around 45 degrees.  You must be careful not to damage the side nearest to your hand when you do this, so be conscious of the angle.  You can also see the end of the gold wire I’ll use to inlay with.

If you’re wondering about the silver-colored leg, I previously inlaid that in .999 Fine silver, thinking to maybe save a little cost.  I don’t like it, so I’ll remove it and use gold instead.

Here you can see the gold wire in the groove (at 3 o’clock), after hammering it in with a small brass punch in my Lindsay Airgraver.  I followed up with the small steel punch, driving the gold further in, and working off the excess by hammering it into thin leaf.

Above, you can see all three of the right side legs inlaid with gold.  I used a tiny burnisher to further thin the excess gold into leaf, and lightly scraping it away with the burnisher.

So far, I inlaid each leg separately, trying a few different techniques as I went.  Above, I’m working the left side legs as an assembly line, in case there will be problems with the legs being so close.  As it turns out, the assembly line method is the way to go.

And here are all the legs inlaid.  Notice how the gold legs blend in a little with the background.  This will be alleviated somewhat when I patina the pendant, but I need to use another technique to provide a little more definition as well.

Above, I used a really tiny Lindsay Universal graver that I normally use for cutting small shading lines, and have outlined the legs.  I’m trying really hard to cut into the base metal (shibuichi), and not the gold.  Notice the difference in definition between the two sides, remembering that these little outlines are almost invisible to the naked eye!

And, finally, the front side of the pendant is finished!  Now to add my signature to the back, texture the silver sides, and assemble it.  I’ll do that tomorrow…

And a quick patina to see how things are coming along…

More shaping to look like an old branch…

And here it is with a quick patina, ready to add the little gold legs to the carpenter ant tomorrow.