Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia, W., Wood-en-grav′ing.

Home Collections/Texts Perseus Catalog Research Grants Open Source About Help

Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:

This text is part of:

19th-Century American

View text chunked by:

chapter : entry
entry

Wood-en-grav′ing.

Wood-engraving, or the making of woodcuts, differs from plate-engraving in the fact that the design in the former is in cameo, while the latter is in intaglio. It is difficult to as sign a date to the invention, as the signets of royalty in ancient times were made upon the same principle, if not with similar tools, upon the same material. The Chinese, as usual, seem to have had the art from a very ancient date. (See printing.) Our friends on the Continent of Europe claim that the manufacture of cards first called woodcuts into existence. It may have suggested the use of the art, and it may have arisen by an original process of thought, but it was certainly long antedated by the ancients and Orientals.

The gravers used in this branch of the art of engraving are more numerous than those in plate-engraving. The same angular-edged gravers are used, together with others much more acute-angled, and farther a variety of tools with flat and rounded bellies of varying widths for cutting tints and for gouging out the intervals. See tint-tool.

Box-wood is used for the best work. Pear and sycamore are in favor for common work. The blocks are sawn across the log, so that the section or block stands with the grain vertical during engraving and in the press. The blocks, when their surfaces are finished, are of a thickness exactly equal to the length of a type, with which they are associated in the chase, for printing.

Bewick, born 1753, died 1828, was the restorer of the art, giving grace and graphic effect, where conventional dreariness before existed.

Stereotype or electrotype impressions are obtained from wood by the usual process of molding in plaster of Paris and subsequent casting, or brushing with graphite and electro deposit.

Woodcuts have also been multiplied by molding with warm gutta-percha, and then taking a cast of the same gum, to be used as a woodcut in the printing-press.

1877.

Tufts University provided support for entering this text.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar:

Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia
Knight, Ed.

This text is part of:

View text chunked by:

Table of Contents:

Wood-en-grav′ing.

Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia Knight, Ed.

This text is part of:

View text chunked by:

Table of Contents:

Wood-en-grav′ing.

Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia
Knight, Ed.