Silverpoint Drawing Complete
The Making of the Instruments

This is where the term "hand crafted" is defined by what I actually do to the materials; those who wish to know how I achieve such a beautiful mirror finish on the various points will find the entire sequence here. This also answers the question, "What am I paying for?"

Important Safety Note: Persons undertaking these tasks understand by doing so that they are engaged in a manufacturing process which, by its very nature, is inherently dangerous. Particularly hazardous is rapidly-spinning soft metal; sooner or later, a piece will become unstable and the radial tool will spin off a large sharp chunk at high velocity; I have such a piece displayed in my shop as a reminder of what can, and did, happen. This is not for beginners; only those with professional metalworking experience should even think about it, and it must be remembered that one must wear eye and body protection. No liability whatsoever is assumed by Silverpoint Web; persons duplicating any part of my practice do so at their own risk and assume complete personal responsibility for their decisions and actions. I learned these lessons the hard way, it is not desireable that you do the same.

Why a highly polished surface? Who would have thought it? Through a great deal of personal testing, it was found that a polished point lays down marks much more readily than a rough, shaped-only point. Rough points tend to act as rasps until contact with the ground smoothes them off a bit first. The point in the beautiful holder from a competitor falls into this catagory.

 


WEAR EYE PROTECTION!

Making the Cone End on the Modern Point.

A short piece of dead-soft fine silver rod is chucked up in a Dremel, rotationally centered against a block of steel, then brought very carefully to the face of a disc sanding machine until a cone is developed.

THE DREMEL RUNS AT ABOUT 20,000 RPM!
A piece of unstable metal will depart the chuck at a velocity
too great to see.

I use a similar approach with the other points, but they aren't chucked in the Dremel - the sterling and gold points are very lightly and gently spun at the sanding disk by hand, and the bevel end of the Modern point is simply held by a pin vise at the correct angle to achieve the flat surface.

 

Sanding the Roughly-Shaped End

Each step of this multiple-step process removes
scratches caused by the previous step.

I work in a circular motion with
each grade of Wet-Or-Dry sandpaper.

During the last grade I will also add roundness
to edges and points to prevent a razor edge.

 

The Final Polish.

A felt is chucked up in the Dremel, charged with fine polishing compound, and the nearly-finished point is brought to it by a pin vise. All points receive the polish treatment, but the bevel edge is given extra care in achieving a mirror finish on its flat, and the edge is again eased.

 

Final Inspection

Each piece is carefully inspected for finish, straightness, angle, et cetera.

The Modern point is then placed in a leadholder, the others in 0.9-mm mechanical pencils

 

Last update: January 2007