Adventures in greyscale and leather stamps

Found out awhile ago that my local tack shop has a 4 ton clicker available for my experiments so I’ve been going down there to harass them from time to time. these are my latest batch trying out different engrave procedures with the machine. Experimenting with multiple passes and adjusting the focus height between passes.

This one is for some spur guards they are making.

Here are the ones I was attempting in greyscale. The finish is how they looked out of the machine except I washed off some of the debris from the engrave.

And some of the stamps resulting from them.


Hope this was interesting, have a good day. :beers:

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Awesome! Those came out beautiful.

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Now I want a 4 ton clicker press!

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Thx, its always a treat seeing what comes out and if my stamp has exploded in the process lol.

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They really are fun, I’ve been considering buying a manual unit. they take up far less room and can yield comparable results.

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Oh no! Did any of these explode on you? Looking back at the photos I don’t see any “after shots” of the stamps.

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You can find a variety of inexpensive presses at Harbor Freight.

Nah the explody ones were among my first attempts. Removing too much material and for some reason i thought it would be a good idea to glue wood to the backsides of the tiles to protect them but the uneven compression of the wood caused the tiles to crack and fail. I’m buying some delrin soon, it seems to be a far more durable material. But it is hard not to make things out of acrylic as it seems every glass shop in my town has piles of it to give away from all the cash register sneeze guards that have been made recently.

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Those are spectacular! I’ve got a big sheet of Delrin and had no idea what to do with it… this would be worthy! :grinning:

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That would be awesome to see what you come up with :slight_smile:

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I had done some 3D engraves (using someone else’s height maps) that would look great on that…just need to figure out how to translate them to Delrin.

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these are two just after the press shots I took, the first couple presses help me find all the debris I left in the engrave hehe.

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I have a sheet of Delrin, too…I’ve had it for a couple of years. I am inspired.

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Hahaha, Amazing! I’m so happy you actually had the after shots. Thanks for sharing.

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I made some leather stamps in Delrin. It melts very easily and takes many more passes not to have a melted mess. From looking at the acrylic, it looks like a much better choice if you are not using a hammer to stamp the leather. I am wondering if something like that could be used to stamp copper?

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Fantastic work! Then stamps in the leather are beautiful! Some good inspiration here! Another rabbit hole!!

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possibly, I would Imagine you would need something under the copper for it to take the stamp tho, like a mirror negative of the stamp or maybe some leather under the metal. I’m pretty sure when I got these stamps in the press they are taking close to a full hit and multiple times in some instances. enough pressure to turn the back side of the leather glossy in spots anyway.

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Exactly! I was thinking rubber as it could be used many times, while leather would be a one off.

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How thick of copper where you thinking?

Copper flashing is sold in weight per sq.ft. I have 16 oz and 4 oz both dead solt. I suspect the 4oz would do best. Aluminum flashing would work as well.