What do the letter prefixes on Craftool stamps indicate?

[AEBL]

Some of them I can figure out: P=pear shader, V=veiner, U=mule tracks, S=seeder ... but K, A, X ... ?

X=basket?

I'm interested in floral carving, but have zero experience. I got a collection of tools from a local guy. I'm sure that there are people that understand the purpose of the various stamps - but sometimes if your only clue is what the stamp looks like in leather, it is still a mystery. For instance if I hadn't watched some videos, the purpose of mule tracks would have been lost on me, I would have assumed it was some sort of border stamp.

Edited 3 hours ago by AEBL

[bruce johnson]

The letters came in after 1963. Before that the stamps are called "Pre Letter" by collectors. They used the letters for general stamp categories in the catalogs. Some of them as you say are intuitive - P for pear shaders, etc. Others like bevelers, basket stamp, and borders all start with "B" so they used other letters.

To confuse things further, some stamps of a certain number were discontinued over the years and another totally different stamp came in with that number.

[chuck123wapati]

it helps a bunch if you can find an old Tandy catalog I have an old tattered copy that i still go to sometimes. 

[Northmount]

2 hours ago, AEBL said:

Some of them I can figure out: P=pear shader, V=veiner, U=mule tracks, S=seeder ... but K, A, X ... ?

X=basket?

I'm interested in floral carving, but have zero experience. I got a collection of tools from a local guy. I'm sure that there are people that understand the purpose of the various stamps - but sometimes if your only clue is what the stamp looks like in leather, it is still a mystery. For instance if I hadn't watched some videos, the purpose of mule tracks would have been lost on me, I would have assumed it was some sort of border stamp.

A couple files that may help, especially conversions for a number of old stamps, or similar to old stamps.

CraftoolConversionChart s.pdf

#90 1961 Craftool Leather Stamps.pdf

[AEBL]

@Northmount - thanks that helps!!