The classier tool makers on this forum have probably all got a proper name stamp, from a proper expert like the people at Chalco. That's a good thing and I'm certainly not knocking it. But what do you do if you know you will only ever make one or two things that are worth marking? I've used individual letters from a set before, but they don't look great.
So I was interested when I came across this video recently - https://youtu.be/OT-SRGH2wD4 which demonstrated that you can make a stamp in brass, using marking letters, and it will be hard enough to work on end grain wood. In the video, DavidW stresses how important it is to get hold of 'reverse letters' if you want to do this, but if you are lucky enough to have symmetrical initials, then you don't have that problem!* You do need to reverse the order of the letters.
What you need to do is to get a suitable bit of scrap brass, mark the end deeply with the letter stamps and file a zigzag border around them.
Here are a few pictures of how I went about it. I decided that the important thing is to get the letters closely spaced and lined up together so I made a very simple jig from some scrap wood.
A shallow housing holds a letter straight, with a bit of wood to keep it in place. Below it is the piece of brass, in a wider recess. Two shims of wood wedge it in place. The width of these is the same as the visual width of the letters, in this case 3/16". (The body of the letters is 1/4" so just clamping three letters side by side would give spacing which is too wide.)
The idea is that you set it up like this, mark the first letter, then move the shims across to give the next position
Here it is, ready to hit the middle letter:
The jig does make it possible to have more than one hit, and still get a nice clear impression. I found that the M needed more effort than the simpler, sharper T, but the jig holds it lined up well enough for you to hit it several times.
Having got the letters in place, I marked around by eye with a pen
and filed notches, joining up to make a zig-zag border
The more fastidious forum members can make these precise and regular; I just wanted to have a go and see if it worked at all.
It did!
This is the result on some unidentified pink hardwood
on beech
and on spruce
I was quite pleased by this, even though looking at the pictures blown up on screen, I clearly need to get the spacing closer still.
I think I will make another, with a bit more care, and make it longer - this one was only an inch, and was a bit difficult to hold in place to hit it. I resorted to holding it in an engineer's clamp which was ok but not great.
Actually, I've just remembered that people have already said on here that they got better results by tightening down in a vice or similar, rather than hammering. I don't have a fly press but I reckon I can improvise something...
Anyway, I thought the idea was worth passing on.
* I suppose you could do a puzzling fake eighteenth century version of MOXON which would be 80% right, with just the N reversed, but I'm not advocating that!
So I was interested when I came across this video recently - https://youtu.be/OT-SRGH2wD4 which demonstrated that you can make a stamp in brass, using marking letters, and it will be hard enough to work on end grain wood. In the video, DavidW stresses how important it is to get hold of 'reverse letters' if you want to do this, but if you are lucky enough to have symmetrical initials, then you don't have that problem!* You do need to reverse the order of the letters.
What you need to do is to get a suitable bit of scrap brass, mark the end deeply with the letter stamps and file a zigzag border around them.
Here are a few pictures of how I went about it. I decided that the important thing is to get the letters closely spaced and lined up together so I made a very simple jig from some scrap wood.
A shallow housing holds a letter straight, with a bit of wood to keep it in place. Below it is the piece of brass, in a wider recess. Two shims of wood wedge it in place. The width of these is the same as the visual width of the letters, in this case 3/16". (The body of the letters is 1/4" so just clamping three letters side by side would give spacing which is too wide.)
The idea is that you set it up like this, mark the first letter, then move the shims across to give the next position
Here it is, ready to hit the middle letter:
The jig does make it possible to have more than one hit, and still get a nice clear impression. I found that the M needed more effort than the simpler, sharper T, but the jig holds it lined up well enough for you to hit it several times.
Having got the letters in place, I marked around by eye with a pen
and filed notches, joining up to make a zig-zag border
The more fastidious forum members can make these precise and regular; I just wanted to have a go and see if it worked at all.
It did!
This is the result on some unidentified pink hardwood
on beech
and on spruce
I was quite pleased by this, even though looking at the pictures blown up on screen, I clearly need to get the spacing closer still.
I think I will make another, with a bit more care, and make it longer - this one was only an inch, and was a bit difficult to hold in place to hit it. I resorted to holding it in an engineer's clamp which was ok but not great.
Actually, I've just remembered that people have already said on here that they got better results by tightening down in a vice or similar, rather than hammering. I don't have a fly press but I reckon I can improvise something...
Anyway, I thought the idea was worth passing on.
* I suppose you could do a puzzling fake eighteenth century version of MOXON which would be 80% right, with just the N reversed, but I'm not advocating that!
