Collection: Custom Steel Stamps for Knife Makers, Blacksmiths, Farriers

Touchmarks and Knife Stamps

Your stamp can be used on any annealed steel or softer metals. You can cold stamp with a hammer, cold stamp with a press, or hot-stamp with a hammer onto red hot metal.

A stamp "displaces" metal to make the image. The more metal being displaced, the greater the force required to get a suitable impression. A typical mid-range image size for both knife makers and blacksmiths is 3/8" to 5/8" but both do go smaller and larger. Those who forge are often more flexible on, both, "image size" and "image boldness" due to their ability to hot stamp. The same applies for those using a hydraulic press.

Farriers Stamps

Farriers' are increasingly becoming aware of the value in branding their work. Some will use a simple logo but, due to space limitations, most tend to opt for a block font name stamp. We typically use 1/8" letter height but, if you have a longer name, 3/32" letter height will work just fine. Most common is a block font name stamp, on one line, with first initial & last name, with letter height of 3/32" to 1/8". This tends to yield an overall image width in the 1/2" to 1.0" range, depending on total number of characters required. If you have a need for more characters, we can put your image on 2 lines, centered on each other. Using 3/32" letter height, your total image height (top to bottom) would be just under 1/4". Hot Stamping is a great way to stamp your shoes.

Sharp Face VS Bold Designs

Whatever is black on your art is what will penetrate the metal to create the stamped image. A "sharp-face" design is generated from line art and represents a "single pass" of the cutter in our engraving process. Sharp face, as the term implies, yields a sharp, V-shaped blade on the stamp that yields the least resistance when stamping. The deeper that V-Shaped cutter penetrates when stamping, the bolder the image becomes. A simple name stamp with block letters is sharp face. If your stamp uses a unique font with line thickness variation, the thicker portions of those lines are something other than sharp face. They are bold and do not penetrate as easily. Sharp face is highly common with knife makers and those limited to cold stamping with a hammer.

Bold" images are not uncommon and can stamp out fine if you are hot-stamping or using a suitable press. A "bold" image is any image where the engraving cutter makes more than one pass to engrave it. This results in "flats" on the stamp rather than a sharp V-Shaped cutting blade. If your art consists of lines that vary in thickness, or if it has larger black areas, this will translate into "flats" on the stamp (i.e. make it "bold"). Bold images require more force for the stamp to penetrate. The more black your art has, the more bold your image.

It is Important to note that "Bold" images can often be easily cold-stamped into softer metals like aluminum, silver, pewter, etc.

Hot Stamping & Cold Stamping Guidelines

COLD-STAMPING ANNEALED STEEL WITH A HAMMER: "sharp face" designs (simple lettering and line-art logos) can generally be cold-stamped up to 1/2" or 5/8". A "sharp face" letter stamp, for example, will likely cold-stamp well at 5/8". A sharp face logo stamp, on the other hand, may be displacing more metal and need to be limited to 1/2" or even 3/8". If your image is bold, resulting in "flats" on the stamp, better plan on hot-stamping or using a press. Click here to see Jig and manual press options.

HOT STAMPING WITH A HAMMER: Anecdotal feedback indicates that images up to up to 1.0" (+/-) will typically be manageable when hot-stamping. As always, total amount of steel being displaced by the stamp will be the determining factor.

STAMPING ANNEALED STEEL WITH A PRESS: Most logo stamps up to 5/8" can be managed with 2-5 ton capability. Stamps up to 1.0" may require 5-15 tons depending on degree of image boldness. It is not uncommon for us to make much larger stamps for use on annealed steel for those with 30-50 ton presses. For knife makers, who tend to need more precision and consistency of stamping, a 10-20 shop press is great option to consider.

Leather Stamps for Knife Sheaths

Many knife makers also make their own leather sheaths. Once again, a stamp is a great way to brand your work. Most logos for sheaths tend to be in the 3/4" to 1.0" range. We can design a traditional makers mark for you or use a logo you provide.

Sample Sizes – Knife / Blacksmith / Farrier

Download and print the PDF document to see actual sizes. Don’t have access to a printer? On your mobile phone, Lay a ruler across your screen and zoom in/out as needed to get the image to the size called out on the document. For example, if the image calls out .626” wide, lay a ruler across your phone and zoom in/out to 5/8” wide (aka .625”). The key point of the samples are to provide you with a “jumping off point” as to what you can expect with the name or logo you are considering for yourself. We will assist you with a final size recommendation.

Let’s consider the skull and cross-bones on the bottom half. The smaller of the 3 sizes would work but you are beginning to push the level of detail and it may close up in a few places (and still look good). Conversely, the largest image gives great detail but you are making it more challenging to use based on amount of metal that must be moved in the stamping process. You should be fine hot stamping or using a press with this size but that’s too large for cold-stamping. For cold stamping “smaller is always better”. One further point to the skulls, in general, we consider this to have too much detail. We recommend you keep them more simple but, sometimes, “you just need what you need”. The skulls demonstrate what we consider a “maximum level of detail” for this particular size range..

Let’s also consider the 5 anvils on the bottom line. You can see, judging from the 2 at far right, using a large number of letters forces “letter size” down and overall “image size” up.