Introduction
So these past few days I’ve been looking up and researching a lot about computers. I’ve gone from thinking “SLI” was the term for “Nvidia” driver as oppose to “AMD” (Since I like Nvidia), to learning about SSD 4K IOPS speeds. All of it for a new computer I want, so I know what I might to throw in it and such.
I’ve set my eyes on a case — NZXT S340 Midi Tower, white. It’s really simple, elegant, and will fit right in to my office. I got the idea to do some engraving on the side window, and have been thinking for weeks about the design I want engraved. Only recently, more specifically yesterday, I realized that I could not only engrave it — I could also do some gold gilding some places!
This would serve as a nice project to start getting in to it, as I have all the gear for it and was meaning to learn it earlier, but never bothered. Well, now is the time.
Purpose
The purpose of this little project was mainly to get familiar and learn from it. How does this work, what mistakes will I do that I can correct, what kind of approach and workflow should I use and so on? While the result itself is kind of bad, I am actually quite happy I did it. I accomplished my goal; I learned a lot.
Since there’s no one that can teach me how to do this, I’ve had to turn to YouTube videos. Apparently there’s a lack of tutorials for this thing. Most “tutorials”, as they claim it to be in the titles, are just videos of people doing it, not actually teaching you jack shit. There was like one or maybe two that taught me a little, but that was basically it. Maybe in the future when I get good at it I will make a tutorial, giving tips and tricks I wish I knew now.
Process
I took a piece of spare glass I had lying around after cropping something from an earlier project, and started testing on that. Time was against me however, I had about 3 hours left where I could make noise. Meaning I had under 3 hours to finish the engraving, which is quite noisy. Therefore, I could not go in to details and make everything look delicate and perfect. But that wasn’t the goal anyway. I made a sketch, then tried various ways to transfer it onto glass. I then applied the special glue, played some games, waiting 3 hours for the glue to be ready.
This entire project took about 7 hours (60% of the time going to editing), from starting to sketch to finished editing the movie, and was done in one night. Now I will have the entire tomorrow to do some other client work, then start on a new little gilding project using the knowledge I now have acquired so far.
I recorded the entire thing. However, skills in video recording and editing is something I lack. I put the camera on a stand, picked a song I like, then had my brother team up with me and edit it.
… and for those wondering, yes that's real gold. 24 karat I believe it was.
Enjoy!
