hand carved signage: headstone

[Darryl Seager]

How do you get that under the drive wheels of the plotter Nobby?

Darryl 😀

[Robert Lambie]

excellent work mate.. 😛

can you tell us a little more about how you achieved this?

[Nobby Thomas]

With great difficulty Darryl…..Stone is not that pliable and as for blades well!!!! I have shares with Edward Mathias.. 😆
Joking aside First things first Rob, find yourself a nice piece of stone (Where I live that is not a problem) I then mark the letters on using a fine propelling pencil….Shares in .6mm Leads as well. I then stab all the uprights using a flat edge chisel and 1lb lettering hammer, then the cross members ie….F’s, E’s H’s, when thats done I finish off with a finer chisel, still flat edged and put in the terminals and serifs..Simple!! 😮 .
I did a lettering degree in at City and Guilds Art School, Kennington, London in 1992-1995, this covered all aspects of lettering, I then started with a sign firm in Uxbridge under the watchful eye of a signwriter who had been in the game for over 50 years, never been out of the lettering game since then….
What I will do at some point is take photos at various stages of completion so you can see the process a lot better. I am doing a nice house name at the moment, so I will do the above with that….keep eyes peeled for spelling mistakes please, preferably before I start carving and not after.. 😆 😆 😆

[Darryl Seager]

Ok, now we’ve had a joke.
Great work, how big is the cutting end of the tool, i was particularly interested in the curves and how they were formed. And how do you get the stone smooth to start with?

Darryl

[Nobby Thomas]

Hi Darryl,
Firstly there is no machine, all this work is done by hand, I use a chisel and a small lettering mallet. I go and pick the stone in scant form ie…..just sawn both sides and then it is either fine rubbed or polished by way of a water buffer, going down the various grades of paper to achieve the finish I require. There are machines that do this work now, CNC type, bit like the routers but They are out of my price range and also it is far more satisfying to produce this type of lettering by hand.

I will post some pics of the tools I use with my next post.

Nobby

[kev hoy graphics]

Now that IS impressive. Time consuming, but impressive. I hope you charge plenty?

would love to see more carving work. 😛

[Nobby Thomas]

it used to be time consuming but now I can average about 120 letters a day!!! with no disruptions which is unusal, normally about 90 is a good day…