Maker's Stamp

If you haven't seen David W.'s YouTube feed yet, you are missing out.  He has some good info there.  He likes topics of things he doesn't see addressed anywhere else. 

The videos are not highly edited, but that is part of the charm.  He just turns his camera on and lets it go.  I find it adds an air of reality when he takes a minute to run across the shop to root around in a drawer for a tool that he wants to show.

My practice bit of pine.  Looks like I need more practice, but this is promising.

Recently, he did a video about making your own maker's stamp "on the cheap."  Here is his video if you want to watch:

I always wanted a maker's stamp, but just could not pull the trigger on a custom stamp that can cost a couple hundred bucks.  This interested me.

The biggest special tool for this was a set of 3/32" reverse letter punches.  I bit the bullet and ordered a whole set.  Used ones go on eBay every once in a while, and Young Brothers actually sells them individually, if you don't want to spring for the whole set.  You just have to find a retailer who will work with you.

Brass is another story.  David says not to go buy some especially for this project, because it is expensive.  However, I did find some 360 brass at McMaster-Carr that was less than $20.  It is 1/4" thick, two inches wide, and six inches long.  I should be able to get three or four stamps out of this, at least.

Raw material.

The first thing I did was file one long edge clean.  The edges were pretty rounded over.  It didn't take long to file it to use all the way to a sharpish edge.  This probably isn't necessary, but what the heck.

Filed one edge clean.

Once I got that, it was just a matter of pounding what I wanted the stamp to say on the right edge of the brass.  It took me WAY too long to figure this out, as I do not seem to think backwards too easily.

This photo sponsored by Right Guard.

I punched this before hacksawing it out so as to waste as little brass as possible.  I learned that I should have used my small sledge hammer, and that the period doesn't need to be whacked nearly as hard as the rest.

It's supposed to say "B. EVE," not "Bo EVE."  A little less heavy handed next time.

I then just freehanded some notches on the edge with a saw file by eye.  It probably would look better if I laid it out proper.

It's backwards, because it is a stamp.  Hopefully, it will spell what I want it to when I bash it on a piece of wood.

The good news, it works!

Ugly, but functional.

I think a big, one handed sledge hammer would help with this.  I really had to whack this with my 16 oz. carpenter's hammer.  Several times.  The deep one above appears to have at least one mis-alignment.

The wood I used to try this out on was some scrap pine I have around.  I found out that it is a lot harder to get a good stamp in hardwood.  For the most part, however, I am happy.  It only took about 20 minutes, beginning to end, so there is no reason I couldn't make a prettier one now that I've done a rough one.  I could saw the letters off of this one and use the same blank if I want to redo it, or I could make another one that says, "Munich," to use in conjunction with this one.

I think over time the brass will mushroom and distort on the end that meets the hammer, but I expect this stamp should last many years.  Plus, it was such a simple thing to make. 

The hardest part is figuring out the best way to make a nice, clear stamp, as there are no do-overs on a completed plane!