GD85 Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 Good evening, My name is Grant I am brand new to blacksmithing and have been teaching myself how to work with metal for the last month and a half or so on weekends. I sort of jumped right into plasma cutting and MIG welding as I have always been fascinated with the idea of being able to make or fix pretty much whatever I wanted out of metal. I make grills, smokers, various yard art and whatever comes to mind after a nice trip to the metal recyclers. Quickly I realized though that it would be better to be able to physically shape the metal myself and am slowly learning how to forge things such as railroad spike knives (decent looking but still a bit crude), hooks, and ornamental flowers. Now I would like to make branding irons for friends and myself. Would like to make "Legal" style as well as steak brands with smaller flat iron or round stock. So far I have been trial and error style cold bending with my homemade vice bending forks, my railroad track anvil and various hammers. It is proving very difficult to make consistent letters in both typeface and size. I can make "nice" looking letters with said equipment however keeping them to the same scale as the others is difficult. This I might add is with small round mild steel, currently experimenting with 3/16"-1/4". Does anybody have any tips on how to be more accurate/more consistent? I would like to make some nice quality brands to give as gifts and have wasted probably 8' of nice new steel on some inaccurately bent letters. Not a whole lot of material I know but waste is waste. They are definitely recognizable as characters however they just do not "look right" together. Eventually I would like to move up to 1/4x1" flat bars like in this picture for the "authentic" look which I imagine will prove even harder. Is this something that will just improve with time/experience or are there any tips anyone would care to share? Cutting soild shapes out of steel sheet with my plasma cutter is fine for graphics, I just want to be able to make the letters/numbers out of round solid rod or flat bar Any help is appreciated. Thank you in advance. -Grant Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 Welcome to the corral Grant, glad to have ya. If you'll click "User CP" at the top of the page and edit your profile to show your locations it'll help folk close to you to get in touch, turn you onto deals and such. There is quite the art to making working brands and it's different depending on what you're burning. A brand for marking wood will yield smudged illegible brands on hide though better ones on raw meat. The BUSH brand for instance would be for burning wood. The intersections where the horizontal bars meet the verticals in the B & H have no gap. Without a little gap at the intersections the heat burns too wide making a big fat run together burn. So "real" branding irons have little notches at intersections. Where two bars are going to run close together a trick is to thin them so they don't smudge together. A wood brand on the other hand needs the intersections and such intact because wood burns more slowly and any smudges can be corrected with a quick touch of sandpaper or steel wool. Next is what to make a brand from. Round rod is almost the worst you can use, there isn't enough mass behind the contact area to remain hot long enough to produce a proper brand. Band/strip stock works WAY better than almost any other shape. Take a closer look at the BUSH brand and you'll see it's made of strip stock. Strip stock has a relatively narrow edge but several times the width to maintain it's temp during the burn. If you were branding cattle, horses, etc. this is extremely important because nothing does worse than an iron that's too cool. Bending strip stock is easy enough if you make up a scaled alphabet and draw the letter you're working on in chalk or soapstone on a steel bench so you can lay the piece on it to compare. Make up a couple dies for common bends. The radius of the bends in a B are the same as a, b, d, p, q, R, r, a, c, j, s and so on Only a few will need a different radius like O, G, D, C, Q, S, U and so on. An easy shortcut is to buy a set of stencils and compare. Of course you can simply scale and print out any of the thousands of fonts available on your computer and the web. You'll do better after some practice with a pair of bending wrenches than a fork and wrench. Whenever possible do your bending on a large length of stock and only cut it to length when it's bent. This will save you a bunch of hassle, long pieces are easier to hold too. Lastly. . . Yeah, you'll need to practice. Turning 8' of stock into interesting things instead of what you want isn't even a beginning. If you can, hit the local steel store and buy a couple few 20' sticks. Try 3/16" x 1" or 1 1/4" for large brands and 1/8" x 3/4" or 1" for smaller ones. Now that I've written all that I'm sure someone who actually knows what they're talking about will speak up. That'll be good. Frosty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob Browne Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 If you are going to use the brands on cattle or horses consider changing 1/4x1 stock to taper from 1/4 to 1/8" for a finer brand. You have the mass to keep the heat but your brand will be clearer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warren Nakkela Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 Where elements of the brand come together it is a good idea to leave a small gap. Too much heat in one place will not print a clean brand. Like on the figure 4, for example, where four elements come together. Warren Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GD85 Posted February 11, 2009 Author Share Posted February 11, 2009 Thank you for thw welcome and advice. I will try printing basic scaled fonts up when I get access to a printer tomorrow and comparing the stock to it as I bend. Will also make some jigs for the curves. Didn't realize that the type of stock mattered so much for branding quality, good to know what is better for wood, steaks etc. Thanks again and I am sure I will be around more asking newbie questions. Is there another name for a bending wrench? I googled "bending wrench" and got a lot of Chinese import pages. Take care, -Grant Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rthibeau Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 scrolling wrench Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Evers Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 IMO, Grant you need heat (a torch is probably better than a forge) to get consistency. A hot corner can be adjusted a small amount much more readily than a cold one. To be honest, I can't think of an actual animal brand that I've seen with adjacent letters such as BUSH. One letter above the other, one or more on their side, one backwards, separated by a bar, just not in an even line. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 Yes, I meant scrolling wrench. My bad. As Jack says there aren't very many if any registered brands resembling the BUSH example. All the simple ones like that were registered long ago, people have been hot branding their stock and goods for thousands of years and used up all the easy ones long long ago. Frosty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GD85 Posted February 11, 2009 Author Share Posted February 11, 2009 Would a small torch like Bernzomatic propane torch work to heat up corners or do you mean an all out oxy/acetylene set up to make the bends? Thanks for clearing up the scrolling wrench. Should be something I can make out of a lawnmower blades (made a bar twister out of one already that works pretty well) Thank you again for the input, -Grant Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Evers Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 O/A is really what you need for all but small decorative iron. Forge would be OK, just not as handy, especially when you're just starting, but you really need a red heat. Bernzamatic just won't get you there on bigger stock. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
easilyconfused Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 Not to hijack his thread but I figure it fits, I've got an order for an iron with a 3W. Should I forge weld and taper the point of the 3 to 1/8 like the rest of the stock or notch one side. Should I do the same for the W points? Our brand of a lazy D over J (AKA the umbrella brand) was so much easier...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warren Nakkela Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 Hello ec, Most folks who make brands with the letters "W" and "M" and "A" make them rounding instead ot pointy. Same with other letters which come to a point. Experience has shown that they don't blotch. Good luck with a "K". Warren Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unkle spike Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 Go to this link Harbor Freight Tools - Quality Tools at the Lowest Prices At the bottom is a GREEN BLOCK "download product manual" it shows how they bend the letters with this machine. You can get an idea of how to do the letters for your brands. Start on page 16 of the PDF file.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Evers Posted February 12, 2009 Share Posted February 12, 2009 Easilyconfused I'd ask the client how they want it. Look at the M that I show burned into wood on the branding iron thread under nonmetalworking. I don't think it's a problem with a good notch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike-hr Posted February 12, 2009 Share Posted February 12, 2009 An old smith told me that a good stock to make shapes from, is 3 or 4 inch channel iron. slit wheel or bandsaw the middle away, the remaining legs have a nice semi triangular shape, what's left of the web of the channel, that stores heat in the thick part, and makes life easier for the firetender at the brand party. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted February 12, 2009 Share Posted February 12, 2009 Good tip Mike. That'll go right into my trick kit, thank you. Frosty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GD85 Posted February 12, 2009 Author Share Posted February 12, 2009 An old smith told me that a good stock to make shapes from, is 3 or 4 inch channel iron. slit wheel or bandsaw the middle away, the remaining legs have a nice semi triangular shape, what's left of the web of the channel, that stores heat in the thick part, and makes life easier for the firetender at the brand party. Mike, I apologize for asking this but is this what you mean by "slit wheel or bandsaw the middle away"? So you would just cut like the picture I attached and then use the channel steel (post-cut) as a bender for stock or you cut/bend as needed and use the channel steel as the actual letters for the brand? Thanks, -Grant Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
easilyconfused Posted February 12, 2009 Share Posted February 12, 2009 I'm waiting for a reply over what he wants for the W points. I'm hoping not a good point. The 3 on the other hand..... gonna be fun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Evers Posted February 12, 2009 Share Posted February 12, 2009 the brand party. Mike, I apologize for asking this but is this what you mean by "slit wheel or bandsaw the middle away"? So you would just cut like the picture I attached and then use the channel steel (post-cut) as a bender for stock or you cut/bend as needed and use the channel steel as the actual letters for the brand? Thanks, Not to steal mike's reply, but use the tapered flange from the channel for the letters. The thin edge would contact the animal to lessen the actual brand surface while the thick edge would be a heat reservoir so the iron carried enough heat. Great idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike-hr Posted February 12, 2009 Share Posted February 12, 2009 Grant, from your picture, cut the vertical line away, the triangular bit that's left,(the legs), would be the stock to use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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