Words On A Belt? Best Way. Stamping, Carving?

[BarnDog]

Ok, here is the idea. I am making a gun belt for a competition rig and had the idea to put part or all of the second amendment on the belt. Then I thought, "how do I do that"?

I have letter sets but that always seems to look crappy when I have done it.

Any ideas? Any examples?

[Cyberthrasher]

Get a nice clean font that will be easy to cut and bevel, then transfer it just like any other piece of artwork.

[DoubleC]

You could do it either way, carve or stamp it. I like my alphabet stamps for words rather than free carving them, but I think it's more what you're comfortable with. However, I always put and antique over my stamped letters to make them pop a little better. Cheryl

[electrathon]

You want to type set it with printing type, then press it into the leather. It will be straight, clean and not tacky looking like it does if you use Tandy letters.

[clintsdivco]

When I first started, a year ago, I couldn't carve decent looking letters so bought stamps. It limited my choices of lettering to much to suit my needs, so I mainly practiced carving letters until I could do good looking letters. Now I never use stamps and it has opened an entire world of lettering. There are so many fonts available on the Internet and carving eliminates the restrictions of stamps.

As mentioned in the earlier post, it depends an your ability and comfort zone.

Here are a few examples of different lettering I have done as you requested.

[oltoot]

Try stamps to get size and spacing then bevel around them and embellish with some seeds or swivel cuts. Otherwize carve and stamp carefully

[keplerts]

Clintsdevco, What swivel blade and bevelers do you use? I just have the standard tandy kit beveler and it always seems too big. Thanks, Tom

[clintsdivco]

Clintsdevco, What swivel blade and bevelers do you use? I just have the standard tandy kit beveler and it always seems too big. Thanks, Tom

Tom, I use Tandy's #8019-00 swivel knife blade for most of my cuts. It's the 1/4 inch straight hollow ground blade and I use Tandy's B893 smallest checkered beveler to bevel all the tight cuts in my letters and other fine work. Hope this helps.

Clint

[leatherjunkie]

toss the tandy leather bevelers in a junk drawer and get some barry king bevelers.

he has several sizes and is well worth their weight in gold. after using barry king stamps i wont go back to tandy leather stamps.

also if you can afford to do it get the leather wranglers swivel knife its worth it. barry kings swivel knife is also better than tandy leather swivel knife.

[RiverCity]

Another vote for carving the letters. Stamps are ok for some stuff I guess, but IMO it always puts me in the mind of cub scout arts and crafts.

You can go to a site like dafont.com and find what looks right, then print out the wording etc in different sizes depending on what you need.

Chuck

[Dwight]

I do not do a lot of stamping, . . . only have one small set of dies, . . . but when I do, my "eye" is not good enough to get the job I want.

For extended wording this is what I would do: affix a plastic piece of "angle iron" with tape or light clamps so that it makes the bottom of where you want the wording to be, . . . measure and figure out left-to-right how much space you need (size of stamp x number of letters), . . . to get your starting point.

Stamp the first letter over on the left side just like you were printing it. Leave it in place, . . . line the second stamp up next to it, . . . stamp the second one, being careful not to hit the first letter again, . . . remove the first letter, . . . bring up the third letter next to the second, . . . strike the third, . . . and so on down the line.

Turn over a stamp to use for spaces between letters.

Check the little sketch, . . . it'll maybe be better understood than my wording. This works for me,........

May God bless,

Dwight

[keplerts]

^{Thanks for the replies. I know in my gut that carving is probably the better way to go. I'm just not sure my swivel knife and beveling will ever be good enough. There are so many Barry King bevelers to choose from. Which ones would you recommend I start with to do lettering? Thanks.... Tom}