Meet more makers in the November/December 2026 feature.
A gentle hum emanates from a corner of Tom Harvey’s East Side house where he’s set up his engraving workshop. Peering through a high-powered microscope, he adjusts a ball vise, carefully rotating it so a vibrating pneumatic handpiece makes a controlled scrape along a brass plate. The motion produces a graceful spiral, one of many swirling across the plate, which eventually will grace a gun.
“That’s how you get beautiful round cuts,” Harvey explains, leaning away from the microscope to view his work. “That’s precision at its best.”
This is where the Robinson, Illinois, native spends most of his days now. He earned his Master Engraver certification in 2023, five years after ending his 30-year career with the Evansville Fire Department. Through Harvey Bench Works, he engraves metal plating, trophies, and gold, silver, platinum, and brass jewelry, but his favorite items are firearms. “It’s a bigger canvas,” he laughs. “Steel is just good and solid, and I can inlay metals into the steel.”
All work is designed by hand. “After you carve the channel, you displace some of that metal at the bottom so that it gives it somewhere to go. (Setting) the metal in the steel takes as long as the engraving project,” Harvey says. “It’s not like a template that you lay on the gun and cut. You start with a pencil, and you white it out, and you start penciling, and then you cut it. It’s all by hand — and a microscope.”
Harvey exercises patience and keeps the big picture in mind when fulfilling engraving orders on delicate items like signet rings, lockets, and bracelets. His talent has earned the trust of area jewelers. “Tom’s artistry was prevalent from the beginning,” says Brinker’s Jewelers President and CEO Dean Brinker. “His mentor, Mike Dubber, spent lots of time perfecting his skills. Tom is now following in Mike’s footsteps.”
Most of his customers need help with design work, so Harvey often gets to flex his creative muscle. When one client wanted a pumpkin-themed gun, “We did green gold for the vines and the pumpkin flowers, yellow gold for all the blossoms, and ladybugs. So, it is endless what you can do,” he says.
Sweet Sign
Like many artists, Tom Harvey hides a calling card in his work. His signature mark is a sunflower, in honor of his late mother, Charlene.
