Saturday, June 09, 2007

Stamp


The tiny result of today's activity. I want to have an easy way of making a flower impression or making a blank for a flower shape, so I was experimenting with carving a negative to produce that. I got this far today. It looks to be a practical reality, so I will persevere. It was unfortunate that I didn't check the piece of tool steel I chose from the box of scraps. I remembered too late that it was from a stone chisel that had a flaw running right through it, which was why I chopped it off of the tool in the first place. I will try welding and annealing, but this one will probably not be too useful for long service. Perhaps with a bit of adjusting it would work on thin copper sheet. I heated the little iron coin blank here until bright, popped it under the press and then placed the tool on and hit it a good few smacks with the press. I think a slightly more solid tool to fix in the press would work to make repeated marks on a bar as a pattern. Then I will make a partner for that by heating another length of tool steel and pounding the negative straight in to that so that I can stamp out flowers in thinner plate as well.
To make this one I started out by welding on some blobs to form the petals with a gas torch using a bit of old spring as the feed rod and then ground back to refine the shape a bit. I think the relief is too deep really, I needn't have bothered with the blobs, more design, less depth should work. This kind of stamp would be good to make from old hammers, so I must remember that next time I go to the junk shop..