Engraving my iPhone is something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time now, the plain metal border was so tempting. I’ve searched the net, but haven’t yet found any hand engraved iPhones. There are a lot of laser engraved ones and cases, but to me laser engraving is not really a true engraving. So someone must start with the handmade.

For starters I engraved the bottom part of it, so when I did screw up, it wouldn’t be too noticeable. The metal seems to be some kind of stainless steel and a very tough one too. I broke many-many graver tips during the process and at least 1/4th of the time was spent on re-sharpening the gravers.

Scroll design is very basic and I drew it straight on the phone using china white and pencil. The width of the metal border is 3mm.

This section took 8 hours to complete. I’m not yet sure if I’m going to engrave the top and/or sides too. Maybe sculpting and/or some gold inlay?

Engraved iPhone

Finally I have something to show when trying to explain what kind of engraving I actually do.

Bulino means in Italian burin, or graver. When engravers talk about bulino technique, it usually means engraving pretty (small scale) pictures. This technique came from Italian engravers and they create truly amazing works of art with this, and they don’t use any power tools, just one graver and small 10x loupe. Works from masters like G. Pedersoli or Firmo Fracassi are so well made, that you’d think it is photo.

One customer ordered a Zippo with engraved picture on it. As I have never done any bulino work before, I took the hardest part from that picture, a facial part of that woman, and engraved it about 3x bigger than it will be on Zippo. Here is my first finished practice plate with bulino engraving.

In real life size it is about this big:

Real size

Practice plate with enrgaving

Engraved woman

As you can see, more practice is needed.

Don’t you just love it when you get something done? Past few weeks I’ve been working on a Zippo engraving for a customer. My first idea was to make it rather simple design, but that sort of didn’t work out. This is first of the ‘replicated pattern’ type of engraving I’ve done, at least on this level. One I made a mirrored design engraving, but I think this one is an improvement over the old one.

Anyways, that engraving is now completed. Here are few photos of engraving in progress.

Zippo engraving in progress, half of the contours done.

In this stage the lower right corner is completely finished (I just wanted to see how the final result will look like, impatient as I am), all the shading is done and some of the background is removed (the more shiny spots).

Zippo engraving half finished.

And here it is, completely finished.

Completed Zippo engraving.

Design took about 8 hours (I’m still very slow at it) and engraving 13 hours.

So, what do y’all think about it?