Engravers

Coming back after meeting with the head designer at 904/250 Pitt (she's a nice lady), I came across a man fiddling with a mariner's telescope.

Turns out he's about to engrave the thing and he was writing the text on in black pen.

I stood and watched for a while, making some small talk as he waited for it to dry.

He'd been at it for 18 years - "So for about as long as you've been alive", he added - and first got into it because at 15 he saw an ad in the paper and applied since he didn't have a job at the time.
After working for Mr Minit in Penrith, he moved and has since been at Destra for 12 months. Apparently his handwriting is pretty poor, the fancy script I spotted was due to his engraver's eye.

His coworkers teased him a bit for talking with me.

Sadly it was around lunch time and they were pretty busy, with people walking in and asking for key copying and everything, so I wandered off after 20min, disappointed at not getting to see any actual engraving.

I am somewhat more inspired to do some engraving of my own now. Don't know why I never thought about having a pen-written guide for the tool tip before.
Will probably need to find some different sized tips though.