jcwoman

Nice! That will work!

Yeah, they're small. I work on 1/2" wide straps, so the letters are about the right size for that. Not as ornamental as stamps commonly used for belts and such. I make straps for dog muzzles and special-purpose collars (they hold the muzzle on, for smart dogs that figure out how to slip the muzzle strap over their heads). It's the collars that I'm thinking of stamping, to personalize them a bit.

Thanks all! I'm going to look for some more videos showing these techniques.

So I know I can paint them and I can use antique.... but I'm wondering what is the best method to make a stamped name on a leather strip more visible and pretty. I got a set of letter/number stamps as a gift last month. I tested it and it works great, but I'll use it for sellable products so I want to make sure the letters are visible and attractive. The letters are just slightly taller than 1/4". I don't think I have the dexterity to hand paint them and "stay within the lines", so a better method might be something that I can wipe over the whole strap and then polish away the parts outside of the letter imprint. I usually dye the straps black, but for this i can go with brown or whatever, because I know you can't easily put a lighter color over the top of black. What would you guys recommend?

I think my main lesson from all of this is that my sharpening skills need to improve, which isn't outrageous given that I'm new at it. Practice makes perfect! But also, I'm going to buy another punch, a bit larger. Either 3mm or 4mm size, and the style that Chuck pictured above. It looks like those have a better taper to begin with.

Okay, thanks, that's super helpful!

You're not wrong, but... this is a second punch that I bought after thinking the first one was cheap/soft/bad. I can absolutely buy a third one, but I'm starting to think it's my attempt at sharpening that's the problem, so I think I should fix that first. So to sharpen it, I chuck it into the drill and hold sandpaper over the tip while I run the drill. The outside edge looks better after that, but after a few punches the edge rolls over again. Maybe that's normal and you have to clear the plugs and re-sharpen it after every 4 or so holes? Really, my issue is that I'm spending more time unplugging and sharpening than doing actual strapwork. While fixing the edge this time after you guys called that out, I used a magnifying glass to examine it. That works fine, but I sure wish there was a way to see if the inside is roughened up to cause the jams. I can hold it up to my shop light and see the light through it but I need a third hand with a really good magnifying glass to really see the inside surface.

Ohh, I see what you mean. Yeah, could be my shitty attempt at sharpening it. I'll address that.

I know, that's what's making me crazy. I must be doing something wrong, or not sharpening the punch correctly or something! Trying to figure it out. I've also punched against an old retired kitchen cutting board (wood). It has lots of little circles all over it now. Since I am new at this, maybe I just haven't found the knack for it yet. Things seemed okay at first, then went downhill.

I claim newbieness... can you put an arrow or circle around the bit you're talking about?

Oh, I was just re-reading this and it caught my eye. You don't find that 4mm holes are too big for a 1/2" wide strip? Maybe my problem will go away if I use a bigger gauge punch. Or at least it would be easier to clear.

The only reason I'm fussing with the punch getting impacted is because it stops it from actually punching holes. Just compresses circles into the leather instead. And I was using a tiny wire brad with my mallet to clear it but sometimes had to dig the leather out and that dulled the edge of the punch. If I tried to ignore it for 6 or 7 punches to see if it works itself out, it actually gets so impacted that I can't pound it out with the mallet and brad... gotta dig a few layers out. I have not yet tried the burning technique, so I guess I could do that. I'm punching against a polyurethane punch board, and the leather is dry. The procedure I was doing was this, but I could do the oiling first if that is better: 1. measure, cut lengths and punch holes 2. oil strips 3. dye strips 4. rivet parts together

Oh, of course! I'm an idiot, sorry. I know at some point we were talking about chucking a punch into the drill, but for some reason that just evaporated out of my brain. So, I tried that. It worked great... for a couple holes. Then the punch impacted with leather again. I even punched it into my wax block in between every two leather punches. I'm about as finished trying this as you guys are likely tired of hearing from me. I guess I need to find someone to coach me in person to see what I'm doing wrong, and then maybe just do all the straps for me.

I hope you guys don't mind me coming back to add on to this thread some more! Still trying to find my solution. Over the weekend I thought I'd try an experiment with a hand drill before I spent money on a drill press. It didn't go well at all. The holes ended up looking chewed. We tried it high speed, low speed, and two layers of leather, all bad. Here's a picture. So unless a drill press will have a much better result than a hand held drill, that leaves me with the arbor press and die solution, which I'm going to research a bit more into now. Couple questions about custom dies: if they need to be sharpened from time to time, how do you do that? Are they less inclined to clog with the leather bits because they're much shallower than a punch? Or would I still have to dig the leather plugs out of them?

So I was browsing arbor presses and they seemed similar to something I've already bought. I have this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08C4WWKN6/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It doesn't have the pressure rating of an arbor press, but seems to work very much the same. Do you think it would work with a cutting die? If not, that's fine. I'm still just weighing my options.