Tara Tarrant, a San Diego engraver says, “When you think of sandblasting, you think of big machinery resurfacing a building. I use it as a form of engraving.”
Custom engraving is used on many different kinds of surfaces and many kinds of products but sandblasting as the method of engraving is not the one that comes to mind first. You may see beautiful engraving on a wine bottle and imagine that it was laser etched.
Using handheld equipment and with the touch of an artist, it is possible to use sandblasting as a cost effective way of etching on surfaces as divergent as glass, metals ranging from aluminum to brass to stone slabs and river rocks. Engravings can be as small as a garden stone smaller than your hand to 60 foot long memorials with hundreds of individual plaques mounted across the surface.
Two such veteran’s walls, one in San Marcos and another in Alpine, both in San Diego county, are open to the public. The memorial in San Marcos memorializes about 400 veterans along a sixty foot long wall, eight feet high. This memorial was designed by the well-respected San Diego landscape designer Glen Schmidt. The memorial in Alpine has about one thousand plaques with space for another thousand names to be added.
Another way to use stone and engraving using the sandblasting method is by building a decorative stone and planting display in the front of a property on which to show the address of the property.
When meeting Tarrant, you may be shocked to find she is an attractive young woman and definitely not the burly construction worker type usually associated with sandblasting. Tara told us, “I love my job. Using the handheld sandblasting unit, I can engrave four inch tall letters all the way down to fine script and intricate designs.”
To learn more about Tara Tarrant, visit her website at: La Jolla Stone Etching
Or, call (619) 847-0047.