Pen Engraving Question

[RonR]

I have seen some awesome engraved pens on this site. Does anyone know if an image can be engraved that wraps around the pen?

Instead of having a straight side view of a fish, I was wondering if a curved-looking (like it was swimming) fish could be engraved on the upper portion of a pen that wraps around 1/2 to 3/4 of the barrel?

I've already contacted Ken @ Kallenshaan Woods. Any other good engravers?

 

[broitblat]

Yes, an image can be wrapped around the pen. It is apparently significantly more time consuming, etc. but Ken has done one of these for me. It requires the engraver to have a rotary attachment.

-Barry

 

[jjudge]

Ken Nelsen, the producer of those awesome puzzle and stars+stripes pen kits, is the engraver to whom I've been sending pens.

See examples of the 'rotary' engraving of images here:
http://www.kallenshaanwoods.com/servlet/Page?template=3699

I just got 2 of these back .... Lord Byron and Aguirre & a monkey, engravd on antler. Its $25 to get a rotary engraving. Send an image that is 300 dpi. Ken is really easy to email and work with.

Here are some "lessons learned" for myself:
1- If you take a pict from googling around, that is screen resolution, it probably will look average to not-so-good. So, scan a good picture in at 300 dpi.

2- Antler is OK, but it has gray, brown streaks, spots, etc.
This could be distracting for the image. So, use faux antler, ivory or off-white corian ... if I want a white background.
(Lord Byron looks like he's frowning with smudges on his forehead

3- Engraving on antler leaves a brown color.
So, black ebony body with engraved-antler cap looks a bit off.
I need to move to a brown wood ... or fill the engraving with black.

4- PRE-PROCESS the picture
I did not spend enough time preprocessing the image.
I need to (a) switch to grayscale, (b) play with the levels to ensure "distance" between the shades of gray ---or-- find some Photoshop filter of some kind that would help this.

-- joe