Steel carving is a technique for printing illustrations based on steel instead of copper. It is rarely used in graphic art, although it was widely used for reproduction in the 19th century. Steel engraving was introduced in 1792 by Jacob Perkins (1766-1849), an American inventor, to print paper money. When Perkins moved to London in 1818, the technique was adapted in 1820 by Charles Warren and especially by Charles Heath (1785-1848) to Thomas Campbell Pleasures of Hope, which contained the first plate carved into steel.. This new technique only replaced some of the other commercial techniques of the time such as wood cutting, woodcarving, copper engraving and later lithography. All illustrations in EncyclopÃÆ'Â|dia Britannica 1911 are steel engravings.
Video Steel engraving
Process
The puzzling, graphical manufacturing technique used in steel sculpture is that, after the earliest years of the 1820s, it is usually a combination of actual etching and engraving, with etching being dominant in later examples, after the technique became popular in the 1830s. The carving is done with a burin, which is a hardened steel rod with a sharp point. It is pushed along the plate to produce thin crimped lines, leaving a "thorn" or a strip of waste metal to the side. This is followed by the use of scrapers to remove bur, because they will be a barrier during the next ink process. Steel plates are very difficult for this technique, which is usually used on softer copper plates. Thus the steel engraving also uses etching (q.v.), in which the acid creates stripes in the plate in a pattern created by selectively removing a thin layer of acid-resistant soil by means. It's far less effort. As well as the etching needle, the engraving part of the steel engraving greatly utilizes the roulettes, a small wheel mounted on the handle that has the usual sharp projection that produces dotted lines and dashed lines when rolled on a plate. Roulettes of various types are used together with the burin and the needle to create a solid mark that looks as tonal to the eye, and allows a wide variety of textures and effects. The actual burin carving is commonly used to complete the engraved image.
First, a general outline is made on the plate before starting a detailed picture. The carving will produce a reverse mold or a mirror image of the picture on the plate. Sometimes sculptors see objects, usually images like pictures, that they carve through the mirror so that the images are naturally upside down and they tend to incalculate images incorrectly.
Steel plates can be hardened to ensure that they can print thousands of times with minimal wear. The copper plates used in traditional engraving and etching, which are softer and easier to work can not be hardened but can be confronted with steel or nickel plated with electroplating to increase the number of printable impressions. From about 1860 steel plates facing steel became widely used, and such molds tend to be also called steel carvings. It can be very difficult to distinguish between engraving on steel and copper-faced steel, other than by date. The most reliable way to distinguish between unpaired copper and steel or steel-carved engraving is the "light and delicate pale lines" of the latter. The surface hardness of the plate makes it possible to print a large number of traces with no metal plates that use the line under repeated intaglio printing pressures, which will occur with non-porous copper. So "A pale gray becomes for the first time possible in the engraving line, and this is what gives the best known characteristics of steel in addition to a heavier and warmer copper atmosphere."
Maps Steel engraving
19th century
Until about 1820 the copper plate is a common medium used for engraving. Copper, which is a soft metal, is easy to engrave or engraved and the plates can be used to swoop a few hundred copies before the image begins to be badly damaged by wear and tear. Engravers then rework the worn plate by retracing the previous engraving to sharpen the image again. Another advantage of using copper is soft metal and can be repaired or updated with a reasonable amount of effort. For this reason, copper plates are the preferred print media for mapmakers, who need to change their map every time a new ground is discovered, claimed, or changed hands.
During the 1820s steel began to replace copper as the preferred media of commercial publishers for illustration, but was still rivaled by woodcuts and later lithography. Steel work produces slabs with sharper, harder, and clearer lines. Also, harder steel plates produce longer dies that can strike thousands of copies before they require repair or repair of carvings. Steel hardness also allows for much finer detail than is possible with copper, which will rapidly deteriorate under the resulting pressure. As the nineteenth century began to close, devices such as regulators made greater detail possible, allowing more precise parallel lines in very close proximity. The commercial etching technique also gradually replaces steel engraving.
Steel work is still done today, but at a much lower level. Currently, most of the printing is done using computerized stencils and not steel plates to transfer the ink. The exception is the currency, which is still printed using die steel, because each bill then has a character and feels that it is very difficult for counterfeiters to duplicate. The carved plate causes the ink to slightly lift and the paper becomes slightly depressed, resulting in a different haptic sensation than the paper printed through the stencil ink transfer process.
Mechanical tools
From the beginning of the nineteenth century, new tools made carving much easier and more precise. The regulating engine creates a very straight line or parallel wavy, usually for use with etching. This other tool is a geometric lathe. Lathe is used to carve the image on a plate, which in turn is carved on a roll for the purposes of printing paper money. Another tool is a carving machine. This machine uses a master template to carve duplicate images that can be carved by hand or etched with acid. The machine also allows the reduction or enlargement of letters for duplicate images.
See also
- Carving
- Line carving
Note
References
- Gascoigne, Bamber. How to Identify Prints: A Complete Guide to Manual and Mechanical Processes from Woodcut to Inkjet , 1986 (2nd Edition, 2004), Thames & amp; Hudson, ISBNÃ, 050023454X
- Antony Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking , British Museum Press (in English), 2nd ed., 1996, ISBN: 071412608X
- Bartrick, Steve. "Copper & Steel Carvings Explained" . Retrieved 2008-09-21 . Salade, Robert F. (1917). Printing Plate and Die Stamping . New York: Oswald Company.
- Allingham, Philip V. (2001-01-13). "Technology from the Nineteenth Century Illustrations: Woodblock Engraving, Steel Engraving, and Other Processes". Victorian Web . Retrieved 2008-09-21 .
External links
- Charles Heath's portrait at walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk
- Printing Method at antiqueprints.com
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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