My small can of black paint arrived today. Immediately, I tried to blacken my previous engraving and just as advertised, the engraving now shows up a lot clearer.

Only issue now is I need to find a way to blacken my engraving without leaving myself with painted fingers. It’s not easy to remove the paint from my fingers.

I’ve also cut up the 4 pieces of 200 mm High Speed Steel rods into 50 mm pieces. Now I’ve 16 pieces of graver blanks to work with. I’m going to wait for my DIY sharpening acrylic templates to arrive before I grind them up.

I’ve also engraved these two coins; one with a beetle and the other, a butterfly. I’ve finished shading the beetle coin and I’ll finish up the butterfly coin tomorrow. Not bad, I’m rather pleased with what I’ve done with the beetle coin despite making a couple of accidental slips with my graver during work.

I’ll also blacken the beetle to make it pops up a little more. I like how clean the coin looks.