Steel engraving

“ Mode of engraving union steel and then transferring the same to steel or other metals.—This invention deservedly demands while it receives the admiration of every lover of the Fine Arts; and at the same time it presents the means of perpetuating whatever is beautiful in the art of engraving, and will probably produce a general refinement in the state of the public by furnishing engravings of the most beautiful kinds, at the same cost as those of inferior execution. ”

“ Look close at this engraving, or take a smaller and simpler one, Turner's Mercury and Argus,—imagine it to be a drawing in pen and ink, and yourself required similarly to produce its parallel! True, the steel point has the one advantage of not blotting, but it has tenfold or twentyfold disadvantage, in that you cannot slur, nor efface, except in a very resolute and laborious way, nor play with it, nor even see what you are doing with it at the moment, far less the effect that is to be. ”

“ Dickinson hopelessly confounds steel engraving and etching, and deplores the lack of "original artists" in these lines of work, for, says he, "steel engravings have found a place in the hearts of the people of this country that no other class of art can ever replace." It is somewhat ludicrous to think of placing Seymour Haden, Rajon, or the immortal Whistler on the level of the producers of steel engravings, which are, in general, the most inartistic and lifeless things ever allowed to masquerade under the name of art. ”

“ Instead of offering a flat, smooth surface, like the plates in line engraving, a mezzotint copper must be first grained by a steel tool (called the "rocker") , shaped like a chisel, with a semicircular blade which is bevelled and toothed. Sometimes (and this is generally the case in the present day) the "rocking" of the surface, on which the engraver is to work, is produced, not by a tool, but by a special machine. ”

“ Some critics disapprove of the style to which we have just referred, and say it is in too close an imitation of steel engraving, but it seems hard to censure works which have given unbounded satisfaction to so many thousand lovers of art. ”

“ After the introduction of steel for engraving purposes about the year 1823, Cousins and his contemporaries were compelled to work on it, because the soft copper previously used for mezzotint plates did not yield a sufficient number of fine impressions to enable the method to compete commercially against line engraving, from which much larger editions were obtainable. ”

“ The steel or zinc plate is then to be exposed to light to completely harden the mixture all over, and is then treated exactly as in my other engraving process; that is, pressed into soft metal by hydraulic pressure, electrotyped, and then the surface is aciercised or coated with steel. The dark parts are thus represented by a coarse grain, the middle tints by a medium grain, and the finest shades by the most infinitesimal particles, thus meeting all requirements necessary to a successful photo engraving process. ”

“ It is, in fact, rapidly gaining the preference over metallic engraving; the great expense and very inferior durability of copper, and the coldness, hardness, and absence of richness which seem to be inherent to steel, having gone far to banish both from general use as ornaments or additions to printed books. ”

“ The most important of the tools used in line-engraving is the burin, which is a bar of steel with one end fixed in a handle rather like a mushroom with one side cut away, the burin itself being shaped so that the cutting end when sharpened takes the form of a lozenge, point downwards. The burin acts exactly like a plough; it makes a furrow and turns out a shaving of metal as the plough turns the soil of a field. ”

“ Roughly speaking, the operation of engraving is performed by three different methods, viz. (1) By hand with a graver which cuts the metal away; (2) by etching, in which the pattern is dissolved out in nitric acid; and (3) by machine, in which the pattern is simply indented.
(1) Engraving by hand is the oldest and most obvious method of engraving, but is the least used at the present time on account of its slowness. The design is transferred to the roller from an oil colour tracing and then merely cut out with a steel graver, prismatic in section, and sharpened to a bevelled point. ”

“ There can be little doubt that means will be discovered of thus producing perfect facsimiles of artists' drawings; so that, if no more than facsimile be required, the old art of cutting furrows in metal may be considered as, at this day, virtually ended. And, indeed, it is said that line engravers cannot any more get apprentices, and that a pure steel or copper plate is not likely to be again produced, when once the old living masters of the bright field shall have been all laid in their earth-furrows. ”

“ Engraving on metal has long been known, and steel was considered an especially valuable method of reproducing paintings until within a generation. Etching is another old form of black and white work, and is still popular, though less so than formerly. Wood engraving during this century has passed through many stages of development, and in the illustrations of books and magazines has been brought to a high standing as a fine art. It is still used in many ways, but all those processes that require line work by hand are being superseded by the photo-type processes, of which there are many kinds. ”

“ When the steel made from such iron is wrought into a tool and ground, the edge is uneven, serrated, softer in one place than another. This amounts to a fatal defect in those articles where great and uniform hardness is required, as in screw-taps, wire-drawers, plates, dies, and stamps for coining and engraving. It is evident, as the carbon is introduced from the surface, that there will be less in the middle than at the outside of the bars; thus the steel is not of a uniform character. ”

“ In metal engraving, you cut ditches, fill them with ink, and press your paper into them. In wood engraving, you leave ridges, rub the tops of them with ink, and stamp them on your paper.
The instrument with which the substance, whether of the wood or steel, is cut away, is the same. It is a solid plowshare, which, instead of throwing the earth aside, throws it up and out, producing at first a simple ravine, or furrow, in the wood or metal, which you can widen by another cut, or extend by successive cuts. ”

“ Until the early part of the present century copper was practically the only metal used for engraving. Only a limited number of impressions can be taken from a copper plate because it wears rapidly, and it is not suited to such work as the production of postage stamps. About 1830 the way was found to make steel of sufficient softness and fineness of grain to be available for engraving. To-day annealed steel is almost exclusively used for this purpose. Annealed steel is steel which has been soft 26ened without being decarbonized. ”

“ Transfer by printing from paper is not advisable, because the resulting fattiness of the design makes the graver slip.
For the actual work of engraving there is no counsel to be given except to choose good and sharp needles of the very best steel, hard enough to cut glass; and that all lines must be graved clean. There must be no excessive pressure, and in wide strokes there must be no excessive depths. In making very fine lines the stone should merely be touched by the tool. ”

“ This mode of engraving is far more easy than any other, being performed chiefly by chemical corrosion. In fact, any person who can draw, may etch coarse designs tolerably well, after having learned the theory of the operation. To perform it, the plate is first covered with a thin coating of some resinous substance, upon which the acid employed can have no action. The design, and all the lines it requires, are next traced on the plate with steel points, called etching needles, which are instruments similar to the dry-point. ”

“ The teeth have to be very accurately cut, and a perfect tool has a value to an engraver that cannot well be estimated. The lack of demand has prevented their manufacture in this country, but they could be made here by any fine tool maker.
Steel engravings are still used to some extent in this country, although only in portrait work. A wax ground is laid on the plate as in etching. A tracing is made from the photograph, from which the picture is to be made, and is then transferred to the wax ground. ”

“ The plates are prepared for the engraver from sheets of steel about one-sixth of an inch in thickness. A plate cut from a sheet of this kind is first softened by heating it with charcoal, and suffering it to cool gradually in the atmosphere. It is next planished, or hammered on a peculiar kind of anvil, to make it perfectly level, and afterwards ground on one side upon a grindstone. The operation is completed by polishing it with Scotch stone and charcoal. When steel was first substituted for copper, it was hardened before it was used in printing ”

“ In the extrusion process, either at high or low temperatures, metal is compressively forced through a suitably shaped die to form a product with reduced cross-section - like squeezing toothpaste from a tube. Lead, copper, aluminum, magnesium, and their many alloys are commonly employed, and hydrostatic extrusion using high-pressure fluids into the die makes possible similar processing of relatively brittle materials such as molybdenum, beryllium, and tungsten. Steel is relatively difficult to extrude because of its high-yield strength and its tendency to weld to die walls. ”

“ If it be desired to make drill-wire for drills, punches, graving-tools, etc., this plan will not answer, because under the removable scale there is left a thin film of decarbonized iron which cannot be pickled off without ruining the steel, and which will not harden. It is plain that this soft surface must be ruinous to steel intended for cutting-tools, for it prevents the extreme edge from hardening—the very place that must be hard if cutting is to be done. ”

“ We had hoped to be able to grave some sign upon the rocks with the geological hammer, but the first time it was brought down upon the granite its point splintered in the same exasperating way that the New York dealer’s fancy ice-axes behaved when it was attempted to put them to practical use. “Warranted cast steel” upon an implement ought to be a warning not to purchase it for mountain work. Tool-steel alone will serve. ”

“ This alloy is so hard that it cannot be machined or drilled by ordinary means; it must be treated by emery or carborundum wheels. Yet it is so malleable that it can be used for rivets when headed cold. It is so tough that it may be bent and twisted at will without rupture, so that it forms railroad switches, frogs, and crossings of great durability.
High-Speed Tool Steels.
Until 1868, the steel tools used in lathes and drills, planers and so on, were limited to the moderate pace at which they remained cool enough to keep their temper. ”

“ If any parts are required to be tempered or hardened it must be remembered that they become brittle and can not afterward be bent without annealing or softening. Tool or drill steel is a name given to uniform or rather reliable grades of steel adapted to heat treatment as tempering or annealing. ”

“ When taking heavy cuts a tool of to-day may exert as much as ten tons’ pressure against the metal it is cutting and the advent of this wonderful material for tools necessitated the building of immensely heavier and stronger lathes and other machines, which, alone, were capable of giving them power to do their work. The high-speed steels, therefore, have revolutionized metal-cutting practice and shop methods and have very largely aided efficiency. ”

“ Castings and Forgings.—There are two distinct ways of making the steel objects actually used in the arts, such as rails, gear wheels, guns, beams, &c., out of the molten steel made by the Bessemer, open hearth, or crucible process, or in an electric furnace. The first is by “steel founding,” i.e. casting the steel as a “steel casting” in a mould which has the exact shape of the object to be made, e.g. a gear wheel, and letting it solidify there. The second is by casting it into a large rough block called an “ingot,” and rolling or hammering this out into the desired shape. ”

“ When grinding a flat surface, to avoid burning, the tool should frequently be withdrawn from the stone so that the cooling water (a copious supply of which should be provided) can reach the surface being ground. A moderate pressure should also be applied, as it is better to spend an extra minute or two in grinding than to ruin the tool by burning, in an attempt to sharpen it quickly. Of course, what has been said about burning applies more particularly to carbon steel, but even self-hardening steels are not improved by being over-heated at the stone. ”

“ A small hole is drilled through the tubing and blade, and a soft iron wire rivet is inserted. The blade is held over a gas flame while the joint between it and the tubing is filled with soft soldering compound and ribbon solder.
The heated head is plunged into water and later finished with file and emery cloth. The whole process of making a steel broad-head requires about twenty minutes. Every archer should manufacture his own. Then he will treat them with more respect. Very few artisans can make them, and if they can, their price is exorbitant. ”