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I Forge Iron

Inscribing Letters


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I was recently commissioned to forge a cross for one of my neighbors who had lost a close family member.  She asked if I could inscribe her initials on the piece and I've never done that before.   I tried carefully using chisels/punches to make the letters, I tried sketching them and then using a dremel to grind the letters, but everything I've done looks childish and not fit for the piece.  Does anyone have any suggestions on a good way to do this?  (photo is the completed cross, waiting for initials.)

Thanks all!

Lodestone

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With the rough texture of the steel, I don't think you'd go wrong with slightly rough lettering.  I do a lot of initials for the bowls I make and think the coarseness compliments the texture....

The letters and heart are all cut in with chisels, and the numbers are from a generic stamp set I bought on eBay.

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What I like best about "my" style is that it has a sense of substance and doesn't look somehow fabricated or mass produced.  The chisel work is deep and wide, with all the little idiosyncrasies you'd expect from hand work.  

Making the chisels is super simple as they aren't something exotic.  You likely already have most of them in the shop and just don't know it.  And, yes, the curved lines were made with a straight chisel.  Nothing fancy about it, just gotta get the order of operation right.  Once you establish the line.... it pretty much carves itself.

 

 

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2 hours ago, JHCC said:

Actually, electrolytic etching could work nicely, using nail polish as a resist.

You can also use electrical tape to make a quick stencil. Tape the piece with electrical tape then tape on a print out of what you want to etch. Cut out where you want etched with an exacto blade and etch away.

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14 minutes ago, lanternnate said:

You can also use electrical tape to make a quick stencil. Tape the piece with electrical tape then tape on a print out of what you want to etch. Cut out where you want etched with an exacto blade and etch away.

That's how I etched my monogram on my first couple of knife blades. 

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Wow thank you for all the great tips gentlemen!  I've never done a lot of the suggestions but I'm looking into them and experimenting on what works best.  

VaughnT - your chisel work is fantastic, do you do that cold or hot?  

To the guys who suggested  electrolytic etching, is there a method/tutorial you'd recommend I follow?  I'm finding all kinds of crazy suggestions online so I was hoping one of you could grant some sanity!  


Thanks again all,

Lodestone

 

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I use a battery charger, salt water, and Q-tips. I'll PM you the link to the tutorial I used. The key thing to remember is that the positive clip of the charger goes to your workpiece and the negative side goes to the saline-soaked Q-tip that you dab against the steel.

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My process is similar to JHCC's. You don't need much juice. I use a tiny little 12v wall plug charger meant to charge the battery to an ice fishing camera. It's only half an amp. Instead of a q tip I use cut off bits of old t shirt made into pads. Etching solution is just water and standard salt. If you flip the positive and negative after you etch for depth you can blacken. This was my first test run including blackening.

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9 hours ago, Lodestone25 said:

do you do that cold or hot?  

Everything's done cold so you have a maximum amount of control.  It's easy as pie, so to speak, and something like that can be done in an hour or so.

Electrolysis works, but I worry about trying it on something with so much texture.  You'd have to use a liquid resist to make sure it flowed into all the nooks and crannies, and then you'd have to worry about how the finished product will look once you clean everything off.  It's a bear of a thing to try and "fix" an issue because you can't easily reapply the resist and tweak things like you can when doing chisel work.

Shoot me a PM and I'll walk you through making and using the chisels.  You'll find it's quite a handy way of decorating the steel.

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I had a similar need not long ago, tried various methods myself but wasn't getting the result I wanted, so I found a local shop that does sign work and had the tooling to do it.  Took them about 30 minutes, don't recall exactly what it cost but it was reasonable enough.  

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6 hours ago, Stash said:

Yo Vaughn- I'd be interested in seeing your chisels and a quick rundown on how you do it. What are the chances of starting a separate thread on it?

Steve

I guess I could be talked into taking some pics and doing a walk-through of how I go about the carving......

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On ‎3‎/‎13‎/‎2017 at 2:02 PM, lanternnate said:

If you flip the positive and negative after you etch for depth you can blacken. This was my first test run including blackening.

Lanternnate - How durable is the blackening? I tried something similar using copper sulphate pentahydrate (Root Kill at the orange box store) in water and a copper wire for an anode. It coated the piece with a nice copper shine, but rubbed off very easily.

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It seems to hold generally well. In the pic is my trash shop knife and it has stayed in tact. I haven't done any purposeful wear testing. The commercial etching/marking tools use AC for the marking setting, so if you have access to an AC source at suitable power it might mark even better. Just manually reversing seems to do a ok job though.

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Maybe and maybe not, that church I did the work for a few years ago, was quite adamant that the work all be done as if it was done at the time the church was built.  Which was 200 years ago.  The Advent chandelier and candle stands were all done with a hand chisel.  It all comes down to what the client wants, better to have both to offer.

From plate to finished stand

 

 

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