Ed McDonnell
Member
That is the question. When carving metal on the mill, there is a trade-off between time to carve and the quality of the finish. Taking bigger bites of the metal means fewer passes which means less time. But it also means more / bigger tool marks.
If you've cleverly designed your carving to not included a lot of sharp edges / points that you want to retain it's no big deal to cut "quickly" (quickly being a relative term here) and take care of tooling marks with buffing.
However, if you want / need points and edges you are faced with a choice. Accept tooling marks as part of the finished product or take teeny tiny bites of the metal (aka tiny stepover) and accept that you may have signficantly aged before the job is done.
I'm not one for growing old waiting for the mill to finish a job. That leaves me in the "those aren't tooling marks, that's texture baby" or "I didn't need those points / edges anyway" camp.
Here's some pictures of some brass I carved this afternoon. The first one is an overall view standing tall on a black background. The left part has been buffed to a high gloss. The right part is as it came off the mill. You should be able to see that the design has been rounded off by the buffing on the left piece. You may not be able to tell from the picture that it is very very shiny.
Here they are laying down on the job on a white background. The smoothness and shininess of the buffed piece (front if you are not sure) should be a little more obvious here. The tooling marks....err I mean texture might be more visible to you on the back piece.
This picture opens the kimono and reveals all. Only those with eagle eyes would see this level of detail without magnification.
I like both results very much. The buffed part feels silky smooth and sparkles incredibly. The non buffed part has some tooth to the feel which is interesting. It looks super crisp and the effect of the light reflecting off the facets and texture as the piece is moved is very interesting.
There is no right or wrong answer here, but which do you prefer? (If you think it's a tough call just judging from pictures, I can assure you it is even a tough call when you can hold them and move them). If you don't like either, that's ok to say as well.
Ed
If you've cleverly designed your carving to not included a lot of sharp edges / points that you want to retain it's no big deal to cut "quickly" (quickly being a relative term here) and take care of tooling marks with buffing.
However, if you want / need points and edges you are faced with a choice. Accept tooling marks as part of the finished product or take teeny tiny bites of the metal (aka tiny stepover) and accept that you may have signficantly aged before the job is done.
I'm not one for growing old waiting for the mill to finish a job. That leaves me in the "those aren't tooling marks, that's texture baby" or "I didn't need those points / edges anyway" camp.
Here's some pictures of some brass I carved this afternoon. The first one is an overall view standing tall on a black background. The left part has been buffed to a high gloss. The right part is as it came off the mill. You should be able to see that the design has been rounded off by the buffing on the left piece. You may not be able to tell from the picture that it is very very shiny.
Here they are laying down on the job on a white background. The smoothness and shininess of the buffed piece (front if you are not sure) should be a little more obvious here. The tooling marks....err I mean texture might be more visible to you on the back piece.
This picture opens the kimono and reveals all. Only those with eagle eyes would see this level of detail without magnification.
I like both results very much. The buffed part feels silky smooth and sparkles incredibly. The non buffed part has some tooth to the feel which is interesting. It looks super crisp and the effect of the light reflecting off the facets and texture as the piece is moved is very interesting.
There is no right or wrong answer here, but which do you prefer? (If you think it's a tough call just judging from pictures, I can assure you it is even a tough call when you can hold them and move them). If you don't like either, that's ok to say as well.
Ed