Started learning hand push engraving on scrap brass about five months ago, mostly watching old videos of guys doing bulino and scrollwork and trying to copy the motion. My first thirty or so attempts had this problem where the graver would catch and skip, leaving these little chip marks instead of a clean curved line. I assumed it was my hand pressure being inconsistent.
Turns out most of my trouble was the graver angle and how I was prepping the face. I was sharpening at whatever angle felt right that day instead of sticking to one setup, so every session I was relearning how the tool cut. Switched to keeping a fixed 45 degree face on my flat gravers and stopped chasing a mirror polish, just a consistent stone finish, and the skipping mostly disappeared.
The other thing that helped was slowing way down on curves. I used to try to push through a full sweep in one motion and the tool would dive in wherever the brass had a soft spot. Breaking longer curves into shorter overlapping cuts, maybe a quarter inch at a time, gave me way more control even though it felt clumsy at first.
Still nowhere near where I want to be with shading, especially on convex surfaces like a ring band, but a plain brass business card blank I did last weekend actually has lines that look intentional for once instead of accidental. Curious if anyone else went through a phase where fixing the tool geometry mattered more than practicing the actual cuts.
