Alphabet stamping on a Firefighter Shield

[chriscraft]

You may get a slight ghost impression of the square stamp. If you do use a modeling spoon and rub the square impression away. Most of it will blend away as shown. You will get better results if you dampen with a sponge and re apply the modeling spoon. I waited till all the letters were stamped before removing the square impression.

Once finished with the alphabet stamping I let the cased leather dry before dying everything black.

[chriscraft]

Front tooled leather used was 7/8 oz. Center sandwiched leather was 5 oz. that was skived around the edges. This will be backed with  8/9 oz. leather.

  I waited till I stitched the 5 oz. piece of leather, that way I can stamp in the last name to make sure this lettering will be centered.

[chriscraft]

Most FF leather shields have a metal plate rivet to the back of the shield. This ends up leaving a visible rivet on the front as well. I came up with this way to hide the front rivets or in this case just eliminate the use of a front rivet. My metal plate will be sandwiched between the front and back layer. The only rivets one will see will be on the back side.

Last name is stamped in the bottom section. Now Just glue and stitch away.

[chriscraft]

This came out nice. The hidden metal plate is out of sight and no rivets on the front face of this leather shield. Not bad for my first project using an alphabet stamp set.

[chriscraft]

 These Blacked Out leather Firefighter shields have become popular. This sturdy leather shield will provide many years of service. The owner will need to drill or punch the two mounting holes required to mount this onto a leather firefighter helmet.

[JREESER1]

Stunning!!!!!!

jr

[Bigjake80]

awesome post thanks for the insite of this great work

[bikermutt07]

Awesome tutorial.

Thanks

[JLSleather]

That's a nice job of laying out the lettering.  Everybody who''s used them knows what a pain those stamps are -- and multiple "instruction" videos showing one letter placed against the previous one don't help!  And then, if there's any contour at all to the lettering due to being on a banner (or ribbon), then the stamps are out the window anyway

 

[chriscraft]

I quickly found out that I needed to tune these letters. The casting on the letters have rough edges that made laying some letters beside others difficult. I filled away each rough edge and rounded them a little. I didn't do them all at once as this would take some time. Just thought I'd mention this for those having issues lining up these inexpensive alphabet sets.