Laser engraver for carving patterns.

[cwickgo9]

Here is a knife sheath I cut out and scored the pattern with my S1 40w, then tooled it. Not the prettiest but it was my first shot at using the laser to score the pattern instead of using a pattern and transferring with a stylus. Also used the shape tool to make the belt loops - not the final shape, but again, for an experiment it didnt turn out too bad. 

[chuck123wapati]

10 hours ago, cwickgo9 said:

Here is a knife sheath I cut out and scored the pattern with my S1 40w, then tooled it. Not the prettiest but it was my first shot at using the laser to score the pattern instead of using a pattern and transferring with a stylus. Also used the shape tool to make the belt loops - not the final shape, but again, for an experiment it didnt turn out too bad. 

i dont see any improvement over doing it by hand. Am I missing something? 

How long did it take? I make these too. I can trace that and cut it out and be ready to tool in about 5 minutes by hand. 

[Ferg]

5 hours ago, chuck123wapati said:

i dont see any improvement over doing it by hand. Am I missing something? 

How long did it take? I make these too. I can trace that and cut it out and be ready to tool in about 5 minutes by hand. 

Chuck,

Advantage I see? I keep the laser file, engrave to leather anytime I wish. The engraving should take about 30 to 60 seconds. The drawing is precisely the same every time.

Edited 5 hours ago by Ferg

[chuck123wapati]

56 minutes ago, Ferg said:

Chuck,

Advantage I see? I keep the laser file, engrave to leather anytime I wish. The engraving should take about 30 to 60 seconds. The drawing is precisely the same every time.

I'm not trying to be negative, I'm just trying to understand how this would be any type of self-rewarding process.

 A guy can save pattern files and print them easily enough and trace them out pretty quickly, so that's not much advantage. Actually, using a swivel knife does take longer at first, but you also learn your pattern and how to use your knife in the process, a skill thats is required for any decent tooling. It reminds me of those old paint-by-number kits they used to sell, lol, you ended up with something painted, but gained no actual artistic knowledge of why or how you did it.

A disadvantage IMO, ten years down the road, you still don't know how to do it by hand, and your skill level hasn't improved. Might as well just buy clicker and embossing plates if precision and time are the goal. 

The elephant in the room? Many of the very good toolers we try to emulate learned almost from the first to draw in and layout thier pattterns free hand. Patterns and tracing were simply a waste of time to them.