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For those who have developed the hand skills that type of engraving is not unusual. I saw it a lot many years ago but not as much recently. Those that I knew years ago had done only that for many years, and did not do other sorts of work.
These days such dedication to a single skill is rare. I had an engravers block that would hold the work very securely but built on a steel ball so it would rotate easily and point in any direction.
Using one of those it is the work that rotates to the angle you need as you need it rather than trying to rotate yourself or cutting in many directions.
As such spirals are very natural to the tool but it is holding the depth of the cut even without diving too deep or the more usual skittering off take a LOT of control. I never developed a useful level of that sort of control and eventually went to acid etching the designs on silver.
Much later I discovered that throwing pots on a potters wheel takes a similar stillness but never at the pressures common to engraving.
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