Home-made leather stamps

[Brigid's Forge]

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

[Blake]

Hello Robert

I would really like to see some of your work. I have several clients that are silver/gold smiths and always enjoy seeing their talents.There is something magic about the marriage of silver and leather and I guess I should add iron and steel to that statement as I am an avid admirer of spurs and bits.

Kind Regards

Blake

(N.Zulch, Tx.)

[Brigid's Forge]

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

[Blake]

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

Hi Robert

I posted a couple of pictures over at the "Show Off" section. Sorry it took so long, I'm just in the early stages of computer savvy.

Blake

[Brigid's Forge]

Hi Robert

I posted a couple of pictures over at the "Show Off" section. Sorry it took so long, I'm just in the early stages of computer savvy.

Blake

And it looks good!

[Brigid's Forge]

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.

[Brigid's Forge]

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.