E,
I can't get into my shop to work for a couple of days, so I will let you into a few of my secrets.
I have been called 'the king of bling' on here, a name I hate. The reason is, I put on an engine, what I think looks well, not just to buzz it up. In fact, I prefer to see an engine in a nice finished, polished metal state, showing no machining marks at all. I will show you later what I mean. A few of the pics are already on here, but they have been lost in the history of posts. It pays to root thru from the beginning of time on here, there is a lot of good stuff waiting to be rediscovered.
Engine turning (ET).
It gives a nice decorative finish, and is usually overdone, a combination of polish and ET works a lot better, just highlight certain parts rather than all over, it gives contrast, so it makes the ET look a lot better.
For steel workshop tooling, as Tin has shown above, it is not just decorative. it has a function. If the part is very lightly oiled, the oil sits in the microscopic grooves and stops the parts rusting so easily, whereas normally the oil would be wiped off with normal use, ET maintains a surface coating.
What do I use for doing it?
The pic below shows my tools.
Basically, what is shown in the middle of the pic are two plain rods, one of delrin and one ali, these I use with grinding paste or various types of metal polish. They sometimes give fairly inconsistent results, the problem being, the cutting medium breaks down as you are doing the ET, and when you recharge the tip, you get a slightly different depth of cut on the swirl pattern from the previous worn out cutting agent. If you are using a metal polish you can get around this problem by spreading it all over the face, that way you get a new charge every cut. A bit messy if you are using grinding paste.
It was because of that, I moved over to the white things with little shanks on them. These are in fact grinding bits for nimonic steels, and are a hard rubber base with the grinding agent mixed with the rubber. I think these are the same sort of thing that was mentioned in previous posts. These are 8mm and 13mm diameters, but if I want a different size, if you look at the rear of my greasing tool you will see a large grey stick. This is a grinding wheel dresser, but I use it for shaping the ends of the rubber bits to the size I want. There is one shown in front of the greaser. I just pop the bits into my dremel lookalike, and by pressing onto the dressing stick I can make them whatever size I want.
You will notice that my greasing tool now no longer looks like your picture at the top. I only put the ET on there as a bit of humour, and as I said, I do prefer just a plain clean metal, I just wiped it off.
The brass plate in the background is a trial I did a few months ago, to see if the ET could be protected to preserve its looks, as it goes dull, just like any other polished metal. This one is the best preserved one from a few trial samples. I tried varnish, spray on lacquer, but both these have started to show their age. This one however, hasn't tarnished at all, and this is the one that I thought would not work. I actually sprayed it with a product from Letraset, used for sealing the wax rub down letters, to prevent them being damaged. If you don't try it, you don't know if it will work.
I won't go into the technique for doing it as it has already been covered in other peoples posts, especially the one about counting, posted by Gail.
What I have done here is show some of my visually enhanced engines and I will describe why I dressed them up to the stage they are at.
This one shows contrast.
Basically three types.
Metal contrast, the difference between the brass and aluminium.
Surface contrast, the difference between the engine turning and the highly polished parts (also reflecting the ET), this is a very good effect.
Material contrast. To me the best of all, metal against wood. It is a shame I can never get a good standard to my woodwork.
These next couple of pics show the difference between a normal engine and one that has been 'worked on' by the bling fairies.
This is a pic of my own designed engine (there is a book on here somewhere that shows exactly how a beginner can make it, dead easy. But I will not tell you where it is, you will have to find it yourself by going thru all the old posts, you will learn a lot on that voyage).
This is the BEFORE.
This is the AFTER.
This also shows another contrast, paint. Even this Ford Modeena Green shows well on this engine. Bright red or black would have worked just as well, and again would have changed the total look of the engine.
It shows that a bit of ET, material changes, polishing and a few reworked parts can totally change the look of an engine.
But I did cheat a bit, I made two of them in parallel, it is just as easy to make two as it is one.
Here is another brace of my own engines. Same engine, different methods of output.
This is how I really like them, clinical, smooth, well fitting parts and a bit of metal contrast. What more could you want?
This isn't a very good pic, but it does show another way to make a different looking engine from all the rest.
This is a modified Elmer's Mine Engine.
On this one I wanted it to 'look' Victorian.
So the basic plan and dimensions were used, but all sorts were added or changed to give the 'look'. A truly individual engine.
This post has gone a long way from your original 'swirlmark finish'.
But I hope it has shown you that it isn't just the finish, but the way you see how an engine can be made to look individual, just by following a few basic ideas.
Please remember, don't just try to cover bad workmanship up with bling. You will find that well fitting parts and removing all visible machining marks will most probably be all that is required to get an engine looking stunning.
But most of all, enjoy what you are doing.
John
;D.
