Another idea on letter stamping

[fredk]

When faced with one alphabet set and needing numerous copies of certain letters in the past, for one-off stamping I took a mould of the required letter, and made a rough copy to use as the 'spacer' 

eg For the name William I copied the i and L and stamped each letter as I went using the copies just as spacers

 

 

My current project requires me to stamp a sentence 5 words long, of 18 letters plus spaces. Maybe 20 or even 40 times.

Get a stamp made? no way hose-ay. The sentence will be about 35 cm / 14 inches long. Too big for one stamp or even several, and expensive.

I got out the alphabet I'm going to use

As I have plenty of moulding rubber I made moulds of the required letters. Initially I thought, if I do the copies the same size, not only will they be spacers but stamps in their own right. Thus the moulds were made deep

As I was doing this I had a 'eureka' light-bulb moment.        

I made moulds of 24 of the 26 letter stamps. I left out X and Z, for now and started casting copies

With the moulds I can cast multiple copies of each letter, here R and O

Never worry about that un-even sized post on the back, it was cut away and wet sanded smoother.

They've ended up like 3-dimensional Scrabble letter squares (mmmm, now theres an idea! )

The next step of the plan. I made a basic jig out of MDF. A 3mm high fence along one edge keeps the letter squares all aligned. I can use another piece of MDF to keep the squares tight in place. I put the letter squares on it and use a drop of superglue (aka CA, or Krazy Glue?) to join them together. Although shown here letters up I actually do them letter down so they are all even on the working front-side

Then the back side of letters are wet sanded to even them up, and a piece of moderately thick plastic card is epoxied to the backs, across all the letters

Now I can make up full names or words as a block and stamp whenever its needed. Of the two names seen, William is #1 son and Kitty is #1 dottir so their names will be used often, as well as other names

Proof it works

As for my 5 word sentence. I went a bit further. I added a spacer to the top edge so I can set all the words against a hard straight edge and get a consistent space. On some words I added a small block of wood for inter-word spacing so I don't need to fuss about that either, its all pre-set.

 

The main thing I have to remember is to place the letters in mirror,      

Care needs to be taken to align all the letters. 

It took a over a week to get all this sorted. Main loss of time was waiting for the rubber moulds to cure, 6 days. The resin for the copies is de-mouldable after 4 hours. I just pour some resin in the moulds when I'm at the moulding bench. 

But now the main work is done its just a matter of casting letters, cleaning them up and sticking them together. Overall, not a lot of time needed on that

As I usually have lots of moulding rubber and moulding resin about this cost me very little. In fact the resin is an old pot which needs used up before it goes 'off'. However, a quick check of the cost of doing all this, I've moulded about 60 letters, has been about £8. Considering that that alphabet cost me £65 and I've never found another like it I think I'm on a winner.

At regular price the casting resin is £8 for 500g. Each letter copy uses 2g of resin. Thats 250 letters for £8 or about £0.03 each. The rubber moulds, which cost about £6 to make, will make a few hundred copies before they wear out.

I'm in the process of working on another couple of special stamps for this method and plans are a-foot for some of my other alphabets to get the same.

If any of you want to try this and want more detailed info just ask away

 

 

[chuck123wapati]

13 hours ago, fredk said:

When faced with one alphabet set and needing numerous copies of certain letters in the past, for one-off stamping I took a mould of the required letter, and made a rough copy to use as the 'spacer' 

eg For the name William I copied the i and L and stamped each letter as I went using the copies just as spacers

 

 

My current project requires me to stamp a sentence 5 words long, of 18 letters plus spaces. Maybe 20 or even 40 times.

Get a stamp made? no way hose-ay. The sentence will be about 35 cm / 14 inches long. Too big for one stamp or even several, and expensive.

I got out the alphabet I'm going to use

As I have plenty of moulding rubber I made moulds of the required letters. Initially I thought, if I do the copies the same size, not only will they be spacers but stamps in their own right. Thus the moulds were made deep

As I was doing this I had a 'eureka' light-bulb moment.        

I made moulds of 24 of the 26 letter stamps. I left out X and Z, for now and started casting copies

With the moulds I can cast multiple copies of each letter, here R and O

Never worry about that un-even sized post on the back, it was cut away and wet sanded smoother.

They've ended up like 3-dimensional Scrabble letter squares (mmmm, now theres an idea! )

The next step of the plan. I made a basic jig out of MDF. A 3mm high fence along one edge keeps the letter squares all aligned. I can use another piece of MDF to keep the squares tight in place. I put the letter squares on it and use a drop of superglue (aka CA, or Krazy Glue?) to join them together. Although shown here letters up I actually do them letter down so they are all even on the working front-side

Then the back side of letters are wet sanded to even them up, and a piece of moderately thick plastic card is epoxied to the backs, across all the letters

Now I can make up full names or words as a block and stamp whenever its needed. Of the two names seen, William is #1 son and Kitty is #1 dottir so their names will be used often, as well as other names

Proof it works

As for my 5 word sentence. I went a bit further. I added a spacer to the top edge so I can set all the words against a hard straight edge and get a consistent space. On some words I added a small block of wood for inter-word spacing so I don't need to fuss about that either, its all pre-set.

 

The main thing I have to remember is to place the letters in mirror,      

Care needs to be taken to align all the letters. 

It took a over a week to get all this sorted. Main loss of time was waiting for the rubber moulds to cure, 6 days. The resin for the copies is de-mouldable after 4 hours. I just pour some resin in the moulds when I'm at the moulding bench. 

But now the main work is done its just a matter of casting letters, cleaning them up and sticking them together. Overall, not a lot of time needed on that

As I usually have lots of moulding rubber and moulding resin about this cost me very little. In fact the resin is an old pot which needs used up before it goes 'off'. However, a quick check of the cost of doing all this, I've moulded about 60 letters, has been about £8. Considering that that alphabet cost me £65 and I've never found another like it I think I'm on a winner.

At regular price the casting resin is £8 for 500g. Each letter copy uses 2g of resin. Thats 250 letters for £8 or about £0.03 each. The rubber moulds, which cost about £6 to make, will make a few hundred copies before they wear out.

I'm in the process of working on another couple of special stamps for this method and plans are a-foot for some of my other alphabets to get the same.

If any of you want to try this and want more detailed info just ask away

 

 

very cool what product do you use for casting the letters? How much abuse does it take before you need to make new copies?

[fredk]

Its a standard polyurethane casting resin I use for these.

There are basically two types of resins, polyurethane and polyester. Polyester is the type used with glass fibre for laminating, boat building etc. It can be used for moulding as well but its a harder more brittle plastic when hard. Polyurethane is softer, as in very much less brittle. Its commonly used to make parts for plastic models. It can be cut, filed and sanded easier with less chance, ie none, of the part breaking or cracking.

So far I've not used any of these long enough to know of their longevity. As they are harder than wet leather they should last a good while

I forgot to say I use a hand-press to impress the letters into leather. However, moderate thumping with a mallet does not seem to harm them

and, btw, I'm only presenting an idea of making up extra letters for stamping using resin. The use of resin for a stamp is not new, Bunkhouse Tools makes leather stamps in polyurethane resin for use in a press

[chuck123wapati]

1 hour ago, fredk said:

Its a standard polyurethane casting resin I use for these.

There are basically two types of resins, polyurethane and polyester. Polyester is the type used with glass fibre for laminating, boat building etc. It can be used for moulding as well but its a harder more brittle plastic when hard. Polyurethane is softer, as in very much less brittle. Its commonly used to make parts for plastic models. It can be cut, filed and sanded easier with less chance, ie none, of the part breaking or cracking.

So far I've not used any of these long enough to know of their longevity. As they are harder than wet leather they should last a good while

I forgot to say I use a hand-press to impress the letters into leather. However, moderate thumping with a mallet does not seem to harm them

and, btw, I'm only presenting an idea of making up extra letters for stamping using resin. The use of resin for a stamp is not new, Bunkhouse Tools makes leather stamps in polyurethane resin for use in a press

Thanks Fredk i think I'm gonna do some experimenting, I was planning on trying to cast some stamps in brass but that is really time consuming i can only do wet sand casting at the moment and am not even good at that lol.