On Feb 21, 4:59*pm, wrote:
On Thu, 21 Feb 2013 11:02:43 -0700, "Bob La Londe"
wrote:





wrote in message
.. .
Whoever said that rosin will not work with steel was right.

I managed a couple of pieces but the results were inconsistent and
unpredictable. I went back to plumber's flux:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/2768312...in/photostream

A quick wash, do the machining right away and then wash thoroughly and
neutralize with soda bic. No rusting.

Ignore the stamping, the horrible result is only partly due to my lack
of skill. Who knew that a set of stamps for $11 would be useless?

You could try case hardening the ends. *Of course then they wouldn't be $11
stamps anymore.

The main problem is that they are bent in all sorts of ways so it is
impossible to line up the letters even using a jig, or strike them
evenly because the plane of the letters is not 90 degrees to the shaft
and this angle varies letter from letter.

I have not done much stamping up to now and thought I would try it
seeing that it would cost me only $11 (my previous set was numbers
only - that one had the number 4 different size to the rest!).

The main benefit of the exercise was learning what to look for if I
want to do it seriously in future. However, nothing that I have seen
of it so far convinces me that it is a useful technique for my
purposes.

Michael Koblic,
Campbell River, BC- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

About all I use the cheapies for is marking lead ingots as to what
they were melted down from. They work OK for that. For marking
anything else, you need a set of US-made stamps, uniform lengths,
uniform widths, can be spaced evenly with shims so the results look
decent instead of done by bubba. I wanted larger characters than the
sets I had, so I got the cheapies for lead marking.

Stan