After speaking with Steve
Roche, a stone based letterer, at his workshop in Sheffield, we discussed the
possibility of using stone within this publication. After he got me to attempt
to chisel a simple letter I, It was clear that my skills in this area are zilch
at the moment and would take much longer than the time I have for this project
to get to a decent standard. We discussed different options that I could look
in to which were much easier to accomplish such as to laser cut into the stone
(while quick, it would leave a chard look to the outline on the letters and it
would also make this more brittle), laser etch (a much cleaner finish to the
outcome) and sand blasting (same as laser etching in terms of a finish with the
added feature of going as deep into the stone as required with a U cutting look
to it). He gave some examples of each and after talking for a while, we said
that for what I wanted, sand blasting would probably be the best option for
what I was hoping to make for my books cover as it had a very clean finish that
gave the impression of it possibly being made by chiselling and would be cost
effective.
He
gave me an off cut slab of Cumbrian green slate to sand blast onto to get a
feel for what the outcomes would look like. I brought it to James down in the
digital print room to see what limitations there are when cutting out the
vinyl. the only thing was that would be an issue was that the text can’t be
smaller that 12pt size as the serif fonts I wanted to try (to get a V cutting
look to the stone) would be problematic to pick the letters out to transfer it
over. With the vinyl cut out and stuck to the slate, the sandblasting was done
without any hitches. with the letters now engraved in to the slate, I was happy
with the finish that sand blasting gave to the stone although, I would blast
into it deeper next time and the Cambrian green slate itself is far too heavy
so a new stone is needed to lighten the load. Don’t want people pulling their
back out when lifting the book.
No comments:
Post a Comment