TRAYS AND SALVERS
Moving on to trays and salvers, first bit of advice here to ensure that you get a nice sharp engraving, is to make sure that the centre of the tray is well supported underneath, by a thin pad if necessary, because during production, these items can have a tendency to become bowed up in the middle. Hit a ping mark in the centre of the engraving, it should not be a pitched ringing sound, more a solid dull thud sound. Many engravers, especially the less experienced or those used to just engraving trophy plates, can be intimidated by the prospect of engraving a large salver or tray and are conscious of the cost of replacement should the job go wrong. Firstly, I would suggest buying a pack of vinyl or surgical gloves to wear, they are very inexpensive, easily available from a drug store, they will not mark or scuff the silver whilst handling plus they are useful in the workshop anyway.
Rule number one would be to make sure the item is firmly held in the jig, rule number two (for a novice anyway) is to start to engrave the inscription or design on 'fresh air' i.e. without the diamond (tool head) actually making contact, say 1/2" gap, this will make sure that 'home' is correct and that the inscription starts where you think it should with adequate margins. Watch the diamond go round a letter and it will give you a rough guide as to whether the text size is correct. You can stop the job after the first or second line, return home and then engrave properly. Another tip to remember is to centre mark the job with a ping where ‘home’ is. Then, if the job does go wrong, for any reason, or home is lost, you at least stand a good chance of rescuing the item by re-engraving.
Finally, if that silver plated salver is a $200 article, it will really benefit you to double, ‘double check’ your spelling, and then, get someone else to check as well, it only takes perhaps two minutes. It is not admitting lack of self confidence, or inexperience, it is just plain common sense. Whilst on the same subject, if you print out the text to check the spelling, do not hold up the printed sheet to the screen, they will have the same mistake, put the printed sheet next to the client’s instructions away from the screen. This may seem absurdly obvious, but it is a mistake I have seen happen many times !!
I am often asked whether the engraving can be filled with a colour (or blackened) to make it stand out and have spent long hours trying all methods to achieve this, and the answer is no. The diamond only parts the metal it does not remove it, and the resulting ‘v’ shaped groove is too shallow to hold the colour (wax or paint). The only sure way to guarantee a solid infill would be to use a cutter then infill with engravers wax or paint.
