Experiments in Engraving

I’ve been wanting to take a hand engraving class forever, and finally booked one with the Hand Engravers Association back in April. But then, tada, global pandemic! They postponed the course to September, but by that time restrictions were still in place, so they made the decision to trial an online version of the Hand Engravers for Beginners weekend, with us as their guinea pig group.

I confess I had my concerns about learning an entirely new (and very tricky) practical skill via Zoom, but figured why not give it a go.

We were asked to provide measurements of our hands, and were then sent a customised graver and a kit of everything else we’d need for the course (including what is now my absolute favourite workshop scriber). I was definitely intrigued by the lump of plasticine!

As the room containing my workbench has a terrible internet signal, I set myself up at what was once my dining table, pre-pandemic, but is now my work desk/general resting place for IT equipment and snoozing cats.

And do you know what? My concerns about virtual learning of a practical skill were entirely unfounded. Our tutor, Angus McFadyen was clearly experienced in remote teaching and had a super close up camera to demonstrate the techniques he was showing us.

As it was designed to be a virtual replication of their workshop course, we all opted to keep our cameras and microphones on whilst we were practicing each technique, which was actually really lovely. Even though we were all mostly alone in our respective work spaces, it had the feel of us all being in the same place. Sometimes there was peaceful silence, punctuated by the occasional ‘ouch’ or swearing as the super sharp graver slipped, other times there was chatting and questions, as there would be in a live teaching environment. Having spent so long stuck working from home by this point, it was genuinely brilliant to hang out with some new people!

We were all encouraged to show what we’d achieved at each stage with our own phone or laptop cameras and it was easy to get feedback on where we’d gone wrong.

I think the only thing I struggled with was how to end an engraved line. There’s a technique to kind of ping the bit of metal accumulated at the end of the graver, which I just couldn’t get the hang of, no matter how much Angus patiently demonstrated it to me in macro quality close up on my screen! Maybe I’ll always be terrible at this though, even if I was shown face to face.

From starting with absolute zero knowledge of engraving, I’m really happy with where I ended up. I picked a really complicated scrolled design to finish up with, and feel like I put all the lessons we learned to good use. I still can’t ping the end of a line to save my life, but the weekend definitely changed my mind about virtual courses. I can highly recommend the Engraving: Basic Principles course and am really looking forward to practicing what I’ve learned and doing a follow up at some point.