Engraving

Here's some images of the final sections of snakes.  In the images, you are seeing the glass after it has been sandblasted and the patterns on the snakes have been drawn on with a permanent sharpie pen.
Now it is ready to engrave.

For many years I engraved with a Foredom flexible shaft series S engraver which is a wonderful workhorse of a tool.  It is very affordable and if you maintain it, it will function fantastically for eons on end. (Note to students: all Foredoms in art schools are in HORRENDOUS condition.  All of them, everywhere.  Its like trying to engrave with a jackhammer while disco dancing.)

I recently invested in a new engraver called an Emax Evolution.  It is expensive but much more comfortable to hold and it engraves at a faster speed.  So they say--I am not sure I can really tell the diff.  But it is a smoother ride, all in all.  The only issue I have with it besides the noise is that the motor is housed in the handpiece itself.  In the video demo© (a new feature here at The Noose!  :)), you can't see the water.  Know that there is a small puddle in the area to be engraved, as there always must be when using diamond tools.  This preserves the diamond surface and allows engraving to be a smooth operation.

You can see in the demo that every scale in every snake is done with massive amounts of love and care!  Gotta nurture them snakes!  This is yet another reason my work takes forever.