Interchangeables roulettes

The roulettes allow you to easily work on small or large surfaces, in order to create black, gray, hatched, textured surfaces... without aquatints. They are mainly used in direct carving (without varnish), although some can also be used with varnish.

Several dozen tips are available, and the roulettes are interchangeable: you only need one handle to have many possibilities.

I offer 3 types of handles:
  • a specific intaglio handle, short (about 8cm) to be able to use it in all positions, and which allows you to use all standard size tips. The bearings are optimized to roll effortlessly even with tiny tips (up to 1mm in diameter).
  • a mixed intaglio - relief print handle: it is longer (about 12cm) and with reinforced bearings to be able to use it in relief print. For intaglio, these handles are a little less handy because of the length, and the bearings roll very slightly less, which is only felt with the micro ball tips 1mm in diameter.
  • the maxi roulette, much longer handle (about 20cm), which have specific tips.

The tips can be classified into 7 main categories:

  • the precision tips with grains (diamond), allow to make shades from gray to black. If you want to create a very large, perfectly homogeneous surface, these are the ones to use (the larger wheels will be more intended for making textured/irregular surfaces). 6 grits are available. For a perfect black, the medium grit is the most suitable. The larger grit will give a more granular side.
  • the precision hatching tips allow you to make textured surfaces, with lines more or less close together. The "cross hatching" versions, and in particular the 1mm diameter one, allow you to have deeper textures.
  • the dotted line tips are a bit like mini cradles: they make many small dots on each line, with a grain that can be compared to those of cradles from 27 to 200 dots per inch.
  • the large grain tips allow you to quickly make large surfaces in grayscale (3 grains available). Large surfaces are obtained very quickly, but with more texture and less homogeneity than with the precision grain tips.
  • the large hatched tips allow for much larger textures than the precision versions
  • the large spike tips, for very pronounced textures
  • the maxi spike tips, for even more pronounced textures, only with the maxi roulettes handles

These first 6 categories of tips can all be used with the specific soft-intaglio handle, or mixed intaglio -relief print handles. A single handle is enough for several dozen tips, but be careful, there are 3 different collars. To these 6 categories of tips must be added the maxi spike tips (they are the same as the 6th category but much larger), which are used exclusively with the maxi roulettes handles.