Trouble shooting a touch mark

[JoshuaK]

So I've been working on building myself a touch mark, and it's going alright, but I have some issues. It's about a quarter inch, maybe a bit less, and the design is a positive K, defined by a circle of negative space. the problem I'm having is getting a good, deep, well defined strike. I tried it out cold of sheet metal, and it really did very little. I want to be able to use it on armour, so I was hoping that would work out. Well, I figured it would work much better hot, and I stupidly stamped it straight on a knife and a draw knife that were ready for heat treating. It worked OK but really not deep enough. http://imgur.com/a/SVvjd in that photo, the actual stamp had it's face ground smooth so that I could try striking the positive K into it again, hoping to get a deeper stamp. 

 

So I figure, I bet it would strike easier and deeper if instead of a circle, I just do a border around the k. But them I'm looking through pictures of armour, in the regular course of my research and I notice this: http://imgur.com/Mr6NmC7 rather similar to what I'm trying to do. Upon further research, I found that a fair number of medieval armourer's marks have a similar recessed background with lots of shape, rather than just lines. 

 

is there any trick to how I should shape my own stamp, or do I just need to hit it harder? 

[bottles]

Don't think I can add much technical to your stamps. The first image of the stamp on the knife looks good except the curved face of the blade lost part of the stamp. 

What weight hammer are you using? To me your stamp shouldn't be difficult to get work. Have you seen the size of missaglia marks! 

Andrew

 

[VaughnT]

Looks to me like the design idea requires moving a relative ton of material.  If you don't have your stamp in a hydraulic press, getting all that metal moved with a single hammer stroke is going to be problematic.

[ThomasPowers]

Perhaps use the same material to stamp into as the renaissance armourers?  

Note that you have to push a lot of metal around to make a raised design; the amount of force used is much higher than for an incised design.  Have you looked into using a screw or arbor press to "strike" it?

[JoshuaK]

Bottles, I was using a 3lb hammer. If I'm not mistaken, the missaglias usually do an outline rather than a big recessed circle. Although it's usually a pretty beefy outline, so it's probably no easier. 

 

Thomas, that might help. I was stamping O1, so maybe just stamping mild would be a tad easier? Do you think armourers were stamping their pieces hot? They must have been. 

 

I don't have a press, and there isn't really one on the horizon for me. I've been thinking about a little hydraulic press, but it's not that high on my list. I think instead it might be a good idea to get a shop assistant to knock it in with a sledge. I've been talking to a few local folks who might be interested in doing some shop assistant work in exchange for experience, so that might be a good deal

[VaughnT]

You might want to look into etching the stamp.  You can get some serious depth with electro-etching and it will look better on thin sheet you use for armor.  It's going to take a lot of force to sink a stamp deep enough to move all that metal, and even with a striker, you only get one hit to get it right.  

[JoshuaK]

I have thought about etching, and while I think it would look nice, I want to go for a more traditional approach. I'm inspired by the fact that the medieval crafts people seems to have managed it. I came pretty close to a decent mark on my own. If it doesn't work with a striker, then I will re-thing my approach. For my contemporary blacksmithing, etching would be just fine, but I like to keep my armour work as authentic as I can manage. 

[gote]

I really do not know about this but would it not make sense to have a pitch back instead of solid when working thin metal like armour. On a knife it would not make sense.  I have forgotten the correct English name for it. Is it "repousse"?? The mark would in that case be seen also on the back side.

Göte

 

[John B]

Repousse can be done on pitch or lead, in either case I would expect the surrounding area on the piece to be deformed /depressed (less so on lead) if a stamp is going to be used to impose a repeatable image.

IMHO, It appears the one I have seen pictured was done in two goes, outline from polished punch, inside form from a letter punch, that in itself will cause problems, double striking in same area. combine the two into one and you will have a better chance of success, smaller size the better. You need a solid backing for punching purposes.

[rockstar.esq]

I'm not sure I understand those photo's because the knife blade has the negative space pressed down whereas the stamp in the second photo would only press the positive space down.

 

 

[JoshuaK]

Sorry, it was a weird point in the process for me to take a picture. The positive stamp was punched into the face of the flat punch next to it. Then the negative punch was used to punch the knife. After heat treating of course.