Stamping Material

 

The point of this exercise is to highlight the pitfalls of stamping metal without adequate guides and attention to stamp positioning.

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Using a small tag of material (for instance a 2” X 3” piece of #18 gauge mild steel) stamp your name XXXXX XXXXXXX’s Project

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Place the material on a solid surface, (not a surface block, the black stone blocks around the shop) the anvil or the end of a vice for instance.

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Ensure (by double checking) that the stamp in correctly oriented, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to stamp upside down or rotated 90 degrees.

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The trick is to use a guide, an example would be a steel rule clamped to the tag, that you can hold the stamps against. This of course helps on vertical location but not horizontal or kerning as it is known. This requires some care.

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Use a medium weight ball-peen hammer and tap once for aim then hard to stamp, multiple hits often result in ‘ghosting’.

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Hint: Rolling the stamp left-right-up-down helps to get it loaded flatly against the material.

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