Advice on using heated leather stamps please!

[tombear]

A while back herself bought me some old leather stamps/brands

So so how exactly do you use them? Do I need to make a little brazier? Do you need to wipe them between heating and stamping? Really I don't have a clue! Do you wet the leather? No guess work please, somebody out there must have experience of them.

atb

confused of East Lancs....

 

[bobnewboy]

Hmmmm, dunno about heating them. I would expect them to be used cold on cased veg tan leather, i.e dampened leather.

If you heated them to mark another material, for example wood, then I would suggest that you are careful unless you know that is what they were made for. Otherwise you might lose any crisp edge details if they deform with heat.

 

[dewi]

Ian Atkinson on YouTube... Leodis Leather has a tutorial on hot pressing leather... and (can't find it right now) he does another where he shows pressing into wet leather...

[video=youtube;azyCKOpdSo0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azyCKOpdSo0[/video]

 

[tombear]

Cheers! That's very helpful, I was assuming the temp would have to be a lot higher. I've a electric heat gun so that's sorted. The stamps have definite signs of being heated up, in one case the handle is scorched.

I"ll find some scrap leather and have a go.

One thing, I did like the guy in the vids compression press thingy and it occurred to me I could improvise something similar. I've a couple of old school drill presses, the sort you fit a electric hand drill into. (You see the old blue black and decker jobs for next to nowt on boots). Now if I had a piece of metal rod the same diameter as the part of the drill the stands clamps around, or even a piece of wood turned to the right size, maybe with a wider part to stop it being forced up wards, I could use it as a light press. Come to think of it not so light as I've applied quite a lot of pressure at times.

atb

Tom

 

[Dave Budd]

i'd be asking somebody such as Sandsnakes. They are for applying marks to leather bound books and that is something that he does for a living The marks are laid on an electric hot plate these days to heat, but traditionally I believe it was a gas flame or charcoal, hence the scorching. They are just hot to burnish the leather (like when you burn youself enough to lose your fingerprints), not so hot as to scorch and brand