247 Ink Magazine (August/September) 2017 Issue#16 | Page 172

tools with diamond bits that spin really fast. They’re good for carving wood but on metal it catches and runs off. There’s no control. So I kind of gave up. I didn’t know what to look for or have the resources to find it. My wife and I were traveling. We were in Charlotte, NC at an NRA convention walking around. I’m look- ing at firearms and stuff and I stumbled into a booth. I see on the video that it looked like someone was doing metal engraving on a fire- arm. I’m standing there and I’m watching it. I watching the monitor and not paying attention to what’s in the booth. Little to my knowledge the guy doing the engraving is right there be- ing projected live onto the monitor. I stopped and stayed longer, spending quite a bit of time there. I realized he was representing a school of engraving. I was like “Sign me up! I’m coming to school!” I got all the information I needed there. It was May and the class wasn’t until November. So from May to November I had plenty of time to look up Google images and pick up ideas and look at different references. I would read books and do drawing just to get my hands and muscle memory geared toward the design. You could draw a skull and it could look good but it could be wrong with the formula. Be- cause I’ve been an artist all my life I’ve kind of progress a little bit faster than someone who’s never done something like that or tried to engrave. So that’s a new passion of mine. How many artist do you have in your shop? Right now I have four others and myself. I have one who does piercings. I have one guy who’s full-time who does piercings. He’s been with me the longest. Then I have my nephew Brian who I apprenticed and he’s a mer- 170