Mag Lite Engravig

Maglites were the first mass produced flashlight to marry pure practicality with aesthetics. Taking this a step farther, Scott Pilkington has created many fantastic personal engravings that reflect the elegance or whimsy of their owners. Follow along for many of these great projects.

If you are interested in commissioning a unique engraving on the object of your choosing, please click here.

These were done for family and staff of the Anschutz gun making firm of Germany. Dieter, the patriarch, is done in an elegant script. Keller is cut in a Art Deco style. Uwe is a stand alone guy and reflected here. Jochen, gets it all done in masterful cuts.

The Wiggins family is known for the elegant swans that grace the small lakes surrounding their home.

Elegance rightly done.

The Watkins family home immortalized with bright line engraving. To see more of Scott Pilkington’s architectural engraving, click here.

This flashlight was engraved for Larry Schwarm. He does fabulous photography of wildfires in the plains states of the Midwest. You can see that his name was designed to reflect his profession. I would be happy to design something like this for you!

Intertwining letters in fancy Old English FKP.

A more traditional script intertwined monogram JSH. For a sequence tutorial of designing this monogram, click here.

Who doesn’t love Charlie Daniels? When I got a chance to meet him on his bus a few years back, I did an engraving for him in the classic Charlie Daniels Band font.

This dark bronze anodized Maglite is a very rare color. I think the cost of the Maglite in this scarce variation was more than the engraving, but Nan is lady who gets the best.

Sam Alfano

Amongst hand engravers, Sam Alfano is one of the best known in the world, thanks partially to the internet, partially to his mad skills, and really as I think about it….. partially to me. Sam was a mentor to me back in the mid 80s (Geesh am I that old?), We had first met at the Firearms Engravers Guild meeting in Las Vegas in January of 1986. Sam was a good friend and mentor to me in the next decade. Later, in the mid 90’s I was the lone instructor at the GRS engraving school.. When they thought about adding instructors, I called Sam and tried to get him on board. The first year he turned us down. Wasn’t interested in teaching he said. But, the next year he said yes, and as of this writing in 2018, he just celebrated 20 years teaching for them. So some years back, I decide he needed a flashlight to brighten his way, and wrote this little story about the monogram engraving and the emphasis on the A.

Once upon a time there was a poor orphan boy who lived in the streets of N’awlins. N’awlins was a big city along the Mississippi River where gamblers, traders, and many of the rich and famous came to visit. The poor orphan boy grew up shining shoes and running errands to get enough food to assuage his empty stomach. No one knew his last name so he just went by the name of Sam. One day, after shining a fancy dandy’s alligator shoes, the dandy gave Sam a double tip. One was a shiny new nickel and one was a shined old nickel that had some strange carving on it that the dandy called a hobo nickel. It was actually a picture of a shoe being shined instead of the normal buffalo or Indian head. Sam was especially intrigued by it and found out from talking to some of his friends that hobos carved these and sold them sometime for as much as 50 cents. He decided he had to try it so with some old nails he pulled from a whiskey crate and using piece for broken glass from a Russian vodka bottle he was able to start scratching out his own nickels. He did nickels with N’awlins street signs on them like Bourbon Steet or Canal Street , some with bottles of whiskey or beer labels on them, and as he got better he even tried peoples faces like some of the women who hung around the French Quarter who smiled at him and often petted him on the head as he went by. When people would pay him for their newly shined shoes, he would pull out his lastest nickel and offer to sell it to them for the remaining change in their hand. Soon people began asking orphan Sam if he had any nickels to sell. One day a big tall man in a charcoal gray wool suit walked up to Sam and asked to see some nickels . Sam had just finished one showing Marie LaVeau the Vodoo Queen and was really proud of her. The Man said he was Stanley Diefenthal from a place called New Orleans Arms and would Sam like to have a real job? Sam was scared but said yes anyway. The man took him away to a street far away from his usual haunts and set him down at real bench with real gravers and a for real microscope like in the movies. The man told Sam he would get to work on fancy guns and knives as well as expensive coins.

Sam was very happy but things were not so well in the office where the man’s secretary was trying to get Sam officially on the payroll. The secretary asked the man what the new employee’s name was. He quickly said ‘It’s Sam”. The secretary said “Well, what is his last name?” The man said “ellifIknow” in the N’awlins drawl. “What?”she said. “HellifIknow” he said again. “What are you saying?” she asked again? Enuciating loudly he said. “AL” “iF” “Aye” “No”.

So she wrote down Alfano and the rest is history.

Jerry and Joan were done the same time I did the Alfano flashlight.

RED’s initial were cut with the Lindsay Palm Control as I do most of my engraving these days. Check out the fine Lindsay tools.

If you would like to see some tutorial videos on how to engrave items like this, then click right over to here.

If you are interested in commissioning a unique engraving on the object of your choosing, please click here.