***Date TBD, estimated September 2024***
 
Expert Master Engraver Amayak Stepanyan will be teaching students hand engraving in a high relief, which can be a pendant or brooch, using hammers, chisels, and gravers. Amayak is a highly skilled, meticulous, technically accomplished artist and inspired designer with a unique style of engraving which he has practiced for 40+ years. 
 
Students will learn the traditional methods of transferring designs to the metal, preparing tools such as chisels, gravers, chasing and texturing punches, and using the tools properly. Students will be taught how to achieve a perfectly smooth finish with die sinker's riffler files, various stones and sanding sticks.
 
The metals that can be used for this workshop will be either steel or red brass. After learning this process, the techniques may be used on any metals. These techniques can also be applied to knife handles and other dimensional types of metal work.
 
Bring your metalsmithing toolbox, including:
Engraver's ball vise (the studio has some available for use if you don't have your own)
Chasing hammer (Otto Frei # 137196 or similar)
Sharpening stones (Rio #113237 and #113379), (Gesswein #3610143)
Onglette gravers (Rio #118573, Muller HSS #3 (2) )
Flat gravers (Otto Frei, Muller carbone steel #37, #39, #41, Muller HSS #44, #45)
Honing oil (Rio #113530)
Half - Head Graver handles (Rio #118042, pkg/3 (2) )
Wood file handles 5/8" diameter (Gesswein #1706011, pkg/3 (3) )
Chinese white (Rio #118002), small flat brush
Mechanical pencil 0.5 HB or 0.3 HB
Mechanical pencil 0.5 6H or 0.3 4H
Small mirror, eraser, Clear Scotch tape, small scissors, tweezers, small brush for cleaning surface from metal chips.
 
Instructor's Bio:
"In my teens, while living in Sochi, a resort city on the Black Sea, I was given the opportunity to become a watchmaker's apprentice. I learned precision handwork on a small scale and continued in this profession for eleven years. One day, watching a fellow watchmaker using a flex shaft to engrave, I decided that I could do a better job by hand. I proceeded to find a book on hand engraving and taught myself the basics of using my handmade gravers to carve metal.
 
I left Russia in 2000 and settled down in Arvada, Colorado, with my wife Svetlana. In 2008, Svetlana and I became citizens of the United States of America. Coming to the USA has given me an opportunity for creativity and artistic freedom that I had not known previously. I was privileged to work with Lew Wackler, Bill Brinker and Baron Andreas von Zadora-Gerlof engraving objects of extraordinary scale and beauty."