I had an old but precious brass Zippo lighter I wanted engraved. It had to be special. AND it had to be onsite.
Of all the typical places, i.e. jewelry stores, trophy engravers, etc. This is what I encountered (one or more of these).
1. It'd have to be sent out.
2. It was lazer engraved (a very shallow etch that burns changing the color of letters to black). I have nothing against this per se but it's not what I wanted on the lighter.
3. Fonts are very limited selection. I wanted more unique custom.
4. I wanted the placement very different then horizontal/vertical.
I drove by the place that yelp had listed and I found out that Dave has moved. I finally go old school and CALL. I left a message and he got right back to me.
After telling him what I had and what I wanted he told me the charge is $6 a letter $60 min very quickly because a lot of locals hang up on him. So basically you're getting 10 letters for $60 and then it goes $6 per.
He gave me his resume over the phone which is quite impressive- and the method he uses to engrave- old school with 20th century modernity.
He takes clients locally by appt only. The bulk of his business is people shipping THEIR precious items to him.
He was very accommodating in arranging an appt for me given my rush circumstance- he had a heart.
When I arrived at his workshop he apologized for state of his workshop- Martha Stewart does not live there. No, it's what you'd expect from a real tradesman.
We sit at his desk while he analyzes the lighter and gives me a book of scripts to peruse. One caught my eye but he says that will be extra (shading and such), but I didn't want that one EXACTLY. I came up with an amalgamation via the book and my description. It was font ala carte :-)
We settled in for the lengthy precision placement of the characters. It wasn't traditional by any stretch. I specifically wanted a character to be halved on the lid and the body. Preparation was the bulk of the time.
Then the actual engraving takes place. He loves to talk about his craft and you can tell he absolutely takes great pride in his finished one of a kind pieces.
So when the lighter was finished, I was absolutely blown away by the beauty. It had the perfect amount of depth to compliment it's age, no puddles or pooling. It is gorgeous.
When I presented it to my husband (who could find fault with Michelangelo). He loved it. Told me like 5x over days randomly as he used it. Even remarked that his pistols (engraved ones) look like a 5 yo did them. Which Dave does those too.
His prices are NOT cheap, take your cheap stuff to the stock guys. His is the kind you take your priceless, heirloom or sentimental items to.
He does odd shaped items, scenes and anything you can imagine.
His facebook name IMHO is not befitting the scope of his offerings.
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