Laser engraved jewellery

If you’re wanting an image or text on your pendant, ring or bracelet, there are a few ways to do this:

• Stamping
• Engraving by hand
• Laser engraving

We tend to engrave by hand or using a laser for our commissioned pieces.

Stamping

Stamping can be quick but you need to have a stamp to use. If this needs to be made specifically for a piece then it can be prohibitively expensive. Off-the-shelf stamps will mean someone else may have the same stamp so the difference is how the stamp is applied.

For engraving, we usually come up with an image or artwork first – drawn by hand or using the laptop. We’ll use your drawing if it’s close to the finished design (as was the case in the WI brooch below).

For that one, all we had to do was redraw it and tidy it up a little. The customer was an artist so that was helpful. Your sketch doesn’t need to be anything pretty, it just has to be enough to give a starting point for the design.

Hand engraving

If we are to hand engrave, for a more rustic look and feel, we transfer that image to the silver sheet and use a pendant motor and a really fine bit to grind away material to form the engraving part.

Hand engraving is done by Jo using a pendant motor. The photo here shows a drill bit but the engraving is done with a really small burr. The design is marked up onto the metal and is then freehanded with the pendant motor. The result is a more lively and rustic design, as shown with the griffin above.

Laser engraving

Laser engraving is different to hand engraving in that it uses the actual artwork to determine where the laser needs to burn. The design is burned into the silver or gold.

Because the laser needs to know what path to travel, the artwork needs to be made up of mathematical lines. This is why we redraw the logo if we’ve been supplied a jpeg or pixel based image. It’s a bit geeky but it’s very precise and very clean – almost clinical.

The laser engraved piece is then hand finished through sanding and polishing. Often we will colour up the lasered lines to make them stand out well.

WI Brooch

This WI Brooch was engraved based on a design supplied by our customer.

She is an artist so we just had to redraw the design as a vector. The layout really works.

Often the challenge with laser engraving is keeping the flow and life with what are essentially mathematical lines.

All our engraved work is hand finished. Often texture will be added, as can be seen here.

The finished piece has laser engraved details, with areas of hand texture, and also cut outs. All of these techniques can be used to create jewellery that is specific to the person.