• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades

Anyone engrave using an electropencil?

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Sidney Smith

58 Cal.
Joined
Feb 17, 2019
Messages
2,130
Reaction score
2,204
Is it possible to engrave brass with an electro pencil? I'd like to put my initials or something on the hunters star and sudeplate on my current build but have never used engraving tools. Windering if I could cheat with an electropencil or similar tool.
 
It’s not difficult to do some simple engraving with a home made graver. An electric pencil marking wouldn’t be very attractive on a muzzle loader. There’s plenty of instructions out there and I could show you my crude scratchings and home made tool.
 
Please, Id like to see what you used. I only mentioned the electro pencil to see if itd be worth it to consider.

Id like to put some kind of design on my hunters star and the side plate just to dress them up a little. They're fairly big pieces of brass and it would make them look nicer than just leaving them alone.
 
The signature on the barrel is one of my first things I did. And the patch box was done years later, as you can see I have no artistic talent. But with the home made graver and the small hammer the cuts can be made. Keep it simple depending on your talent it can at least brake up a large boring space. There's plenty of books and inter net sources on how to make a graver.
001 by Oliver Sudden, on Flickr
 
I'm not sure what is meant by "electric pencil but if it is the vibrating pencil tool, of course it can be used to make the same lines and curves that true engraving uses. The only thing is, the results doesn't look anything like true engraving where a small, smooth, trench is cut by the sharp edge of an engraving tool.
The results will look like what it is. Thousands of little cones stabbed into the metal leaving a rough groove behind.
 
I have only used those things in the metal shop at college to mark my tools........only because I didn't have an engraving hammer and chisel with me.
 
I am not a metal engraver but have used one of those electro things to mark items as others have stated, they are for me hard to control, gets the job done but looks like a 3rd grader re-producing a fine painting. I would never use one on any type of gun for any reason.
 
They were popular for marking things in the `70's as part of "Operation I.D." where owners put their SSN's or DL #'s on all sorts of things. As far as I know that was the 1970's, rather than the 1770's.
 
Those things have no gun applications. In the '70's many fine guns were ruined with electropencils.
 
Back
Top