Brigid's Forge

I agree grinding is the way to go. We have the same problem if we order commercial metal stamps. The shoulder cuts into the metal (it has more to do with the springiness of the material, not just how you hold the stamp), and modeling tools won't do anything to smooth that out. So all new stamps have the shoulders ground off before we even start. Our letter stamps are zinc die cast stuff, which can corrode a bit but not really rust. Somewhere I have the instructions for chrome plating tools, if anyone is really interested. However, I find frequent use is the best corrosion prevension in our workshop, even for the very corrodable high carbon tool steel we make into our own stamps. Leaving the backs completely alone for aligning purposes, I did grind off the shoulders and face corners. No edges except on the letter shape. I used a flex-shaft tool and Mizzy heatless grinding wheels. Easier to control what is removed that way, and it's fast on die-cast. A few got a good polish after that, but the rest did not, as it did not really seem to matter. I would use a file before a belt sander, just so I could see what was going on.

We would be interested in a guild in the Southeast, and would try to attend meetings, although the closer to north Mississippi the more frequently we would show.

I have thumbtacked full sheets of sandpaper to smooth plywood, and even the endcut from a 2x10; it works too as long as you do not go over the edge. For rouge, porosity is the key. I even have a southern pine 2x4 whose surface is coated enough with rouge to strop long blades, with a sort of travelling motion. I gave up on a lot of rouge uses when I discovered the really high grit sandpapers - like 2500 will do about the same as rouge. And you can put it against a harder surface, like your granite, for less rounding. This is also how I polish my gravers for decorative cuts on silver.

Here is an experiment with steel, as I saw there are vendors offering specialty steel dies for leather. This die is almost one inch high and two inches long. The stain is a lighter antique mahogany. I left off the experiments with the type metal. The other die left a good impression without wear or deformation to the metal where it made contact, but I overestimated the compression of the leather and the pattern was a little too deep to make full contact in all places. I'll try again in a few weeks when I get a moment.

Here are the first experiments with the stamps. The first is made from a one-inch wooden dowel, sealed with polyurethane. The second is a coil of german silver soldered to a steel back plate. (Same coil repeats.) The third was cut from lexan plastic sheet with a jeweler's saw and epoxied to a back plate. The last was cut from thick german silver and soldered to a steel back plate. The stain is antique mahogany. A few are not well stamped, as this was the first practice with them and I wasn't entirely sure how hard the blows should be.

And it looks good!

How about an interactive demonstration and discussion? It mainly uses the Chat feature and a posted log-on time. This was done for a while by a blacksmithing group with fair results; the transcripts are still at iForge so you can see what I mean. Robert Shinn

My wife is busily working up Art Nouveau designs to tool into leather. Although some of them I've looked over will probably be made up as unit dies. Then I can just build another cradle and run them through the hydraulic press like the combs! Robert Shinn

A sampling is up at Brigid's Forge. Just follow the link below. We never seem to get everything up. I still need to process up a lot of photographs. Some of the new stamps are up on the main page; you should be able to pick out the atypicals near the bottom of the set. Have some of your work to show? Robert Shinn

We are silversmiths who have had to start making leather to go with some of our pieces. We soon reached the limits of the commercial stamps and made some of our own. So far we have experimented with steel, brass, Lexan plastic, type metal, and wooden dowels. We'll post some pictures later and give details if anyone is interested. Robert Shinn Brigid's Forge Traditional Silversmithing for Today's World