How-to Tuesday: Sandblasting with Victory Stone Engraving

My parents run a stone engraving business (Victory Stone Engraving), so when I go home for visits, I get to play with the sandblaster. This time I took some pictures of the process. Here's how it works. 

Start with a rock. I'm guessing this one is granite. Any geologists reading this who can tell for sure? 

 

We'll engrave some little bits of tile, too. 


The first step is to come up with an engraving design that will be transferred to a self-adhesive rubber stencil. This can be done by hand, but doing it on the computer is faster and designs can be used again and again. The images need to be vector graphics--Adobe Illustrator or the open-source Inkscape are good programs to try--so that the lines are clearly defined for the cutting process. 

This is the plotter. Think of it as a printer that has a razor blade instead of ink. It cuts out the designs for you. 

Here's a little video of it in action:

I never get tired of watching it cut out masks. There's a lot to be said for doing things by hand…but if one machine turns a 45-minute process into a 45-second process, sign me up!

Of course, you still have take a few minutes to remove the parts of the stencil where you want the rock to be exposed during blasting. This process is called weeding. I find it oddly satisfying, but that's probably because I only do it a few times a year. 


Then you tape over the entire design so that all the little squiggles and cutouts stay in place when you peel the plastic backing away from the stick side of the stencil. 

Here are our tiles, all masked up and ready for blasting. 

And here is the masked rock. 

The sandblasting is done in a blast cabinet, which is definitely up there on my List of Coolest Inventions Ever. It resembles the glove boxes used for dangerous chemistry experiments. With your arms in the rather bulky, sand-resistant gloves, you engrave using a jet of compressed air and sand. It's awkward at first but the setup keeps you from breathing the abrasive, which is actually made from an aluminum ore, not beach sand. 

Inside the blast cabinet. 

Here's my dad, pretending to sandblast the rock. He's pretending because I stuck my head and camera in one end of the cabinet to get this picture. 

After the blasting, the rock and tiles are etched and the rubber masks look a little worse for wear. Now we just peel away the stencil and protective duct tape and…

… voilà! Tiny engraved tiles. 


And a rock that looks like a fossil. Cool, huh?

*****

p.s. If you're looking for engraved stuff, the fish skeleton rock in this post can be found in my parent's Etsy store, custom-made rocks are available on their website, and there are some engraved stone pendants here.