Personalising your work..

[biker-bri]

Hi everyone, you have got the old Gray matter working here I would like to use my avatar as my mark on leather, what would be the best way to achieve this 1, draw then engrave it on a hard piece of wood i.e lignum vitae or 2, use plaster of Paris draw and
engrave then cast with some kind of resin ? any thoughts.
hard plastic rod ?

[JonnyP]

That design is quite complex for a stamp imo.. (Not that I know much about stamps mind). I would of thought you would lose a lot of the detailing trying to turn it into a stamp..
How about using a pointed end on a soldering iron and practice drawing it straight onto the leather. Practice making perfect n all that..
Or maybe there is a jeweller or someone that could etch out the design on a piece of rounded steel, that you could then just heat up and use..

[CanadianMike]

The home process of etching a printed circuit board came to mind for his design, use solid copper stock, print the design on the printer (I'm slow right now, and been almost two decades since I did one) on the right paper (recently tried using inkjet glossy photo-paper in a laser printer, iron onto the metal, and etch), and use ferric chloride to eat away at the exposed areas of the copper, leaving only the resist part remaining. Wouldn't need to etch too deep, just enough to heat up and touch the wood/leather to leave the mark.

[biker-bri]

I hadn't thought about etching for a stamp or branding leather rather than embossing, so thank you both for the idea the old Gray matter is working overtime now

[CanadianMike]

Google is your friend, I searched high and low for means to etch my STKR in my blades, ended up blowing cash on photo-resist stencils, marker, etchant and such, and after wasting half my stencils got it as I wanted (followed the phone instructions from the woman, nothing got me what I wanted, til I reversed the leads compared to what I was told (she said ground on blade, positive on marker), and funny thing, there is less residue on the stencils after putting the red on the blade and ground on the marker, so easier to clean and re-use.

Wood/leather on the other hand, I like this approach, but only works for a simple symbol, but if one can use the circuit board etching approach to create something that can at least be heated with a torch and used, perfect! Only need about a millimeter in depth etch really....