Hand Stamping Metal - What I've Learned the Hard Way

Hand Stamped Jewelry | Cabin Creek Jewelry

Immediately when I think a piece would look good with some stamping, my neck begins to ache, my fingers begin to burn and my wrists want to runaway and die. This makes me think I should look into some ergonomics for stamping.

I LOVE metal stamps. The designs are endless and can really add that special something about a piece. Stamping can be fun but there is zero room for error, you can't cover up a mistake unless you can figure out a way to incorporate it into the design. Quite a few, more than I'd like to admit to, pieces of metal have been thrown across the garage because the stamping gremlin spooked me and made my hammer slip.

So, since I am the generous person that I am...sort of, I am going to list and give some brief instructions for those of you who are new to hand stamping metal jewelry.

Anneal, anneal, and when in doubt anneal some more.

Yes I am lazy, and impatient. A lot of times I want to push through and get the piece done. Once I start a piece, it pretty much takes the house being on fire for me to put it down and come back to it later. Annealing is the process of heating your metal to a certain temperature to make the metal soft again. This is as simple as I can explain it and honestly if you are using a torch to make jewelry then you know how to anneal. As you continue stamping, bending the metal, hitting the metal, doing anything to the metal it causes the metal to work harden. Hard metal stamps like crap. Your stamp wont go deep enough or you'll lose your grip and the stamp will hop along making duplicates.

Measure twice, stamp once.

I like to eyeball it, remember I'm lazy. Most of the time my pieces come out pretty good but if it's a repetitive design like the arrows in the cuff above then I measure. I like to do a short series of the stamping on a scrap piece so I can then measure the imprints which then allows me to divide out the metal piece so the stamp design is even. For the arrows in the above picture, I stamped two arrows on a scrap sheet and found I wanted the arrows 5mm apart. Then I measured the length of the cuff and made lines with my sharpie every 5mm. This also gave me a guide to make sure each arrow was perpendicular with the edge of the cuff. This is super helpful because you'll find as your hand holding the stamp begins to tire, the stamp will rotate and you'll lift up the stamp to discover your design is crooked.

Rule with a heavy hammer.

Now, in addition to being lazy, I am also cheap. I will use anything I can that's already laying around the house before I'll go buy something. Some of my most useful jewelry tools did not begin their life intended for jewelry. My most used metal stamp was born a hammer. I have not used a hammer that it's specific purpose is for metal stamping. In the beginning I used just an everyday hammer. This didn't work well for me because of the small surface area on the hammer head. I very skillfully and stealthy stole my boyfriend's mini sledge hammer, that's the technical name I'm sure, and it's been a gem to stamp with. Large surface area and the weight allows me to not have to swing so hard, just a couple light taps to get the stamp seated then a couple more hard hits and I have a wonderful deep stamp impression.

Quality is EVERYTHING.

You can have the most high-tech hammer, the world's best annealed metal, perfect stamping surface and it still will look bad if you are using a poor quality stamp. A lot of the cheaper metal stamps don't produce a nice deep design. If you are oxidizing your piece and plan to polish but keep the oxidation in the stamp design so it stands out, those shallow stamps will not hold the oxidation color like a deeper stamp. I mostly use hand made metal stamps but have purchased a few where the design carving wasn't done very well. I know it's not easy to create a metal stamp by hand but you can tell when someone didn't put the time and testing in the stamp to ensure the design is even and eye pleasing.

Everyone has their own way of stamping and who knows I may be doing it the hard way, the joys of being a self-taught metalsmith, but these changes I've made have really increased the quality of my stamped jewelry pieces and I sell a lot more handstamped jewelry.