A liner, in the chasing and metal-decoration vocabulary, is a graver or chasing tool with a flat working face that has been shaped or filed to produce a row of parallel teeth or fine lines. When struck or dragged across the metal surface the tool transfers that ribbed pattern, producing a band of closely spaced parallel lines in a single stroke. The tool is one of the basic pieces of the chaser's workbench, alongside the matting tool, the planishing tool and the various line, grain and beading punches.

Configuration

The face of a liner is flat or very gently curved and carries a number of teeth, typically between three and twelve, oriented across the working width. Tooth pitch ranges from very fine to relatively coarse, and a working chaser will keep a graded set of liners covering the typical pitch range needed for the work being done. The teeth themselves are made by filing or by milling shallow slots into the face, producing a pattern that can be sharp, rounded or wedge-shaped according to the maker's preference. A well-made liner produces consistent line spacing and consistent line depth across the full width of its face.

Use in chasing

In chasing, the liner is used to produce repeated lines that fill an area with parallel detail. Such filling is the foundation of much chased decoration, used to differentiate textures of cloth, hair, water, foliage and architectural elements within a chased scene. The chaser holds the tool against the surface at a shallow angle and strikes the rear of the tool with a chasing hammer, walking the tool along the line of the desired band and re-striking at each step. Skilled use produces a continuous appearance from what is in fact a series of overlapping strikes.

Use in engraving

Liners are also used in engraving, in which case the tool is pushed by hand or driven by a pneumatic system rather than struck. In either case the function is similar: the multiple teeth produce a band of parallel cuts in one pass that would otherwise require multiple passes with a single graver.

Distinction from related tools

The liner should be distinguished from the matting tool, which produces a textured rather than linear pattern; from the single-line graver or beck, which makes a single fine line at each stroke; and from the bordering or background tools, which are designed to compress the metal next to a raised area rather than to produce surface decoration in their own right. In some workshop vocabularies liner is used loosely to describe any line-producing chasing tool, but the specific multi-tooth tool is the classical sense.