I think I’ve finally found the “perfect” way to sign my work. I’ve used letter punches and wasn’t happy with how uniform they were (too uniform, lacking character). The same goes for branding irons. Besides, from what I have seen, it’s hard to get crisp burnt edges, and their size makes their use impractical on small pieces. I’ve used pyrography, fine-tip Sharpies, pen, and a V-tool as well. But my favourite so far is an engraver (made by Dremel). Set to the shortest stroke, I am able to sign my work in such a way that it is hand-written, permanent and readable, while not standing out too much – it has to be looked at from the right angle to read easily.
Discussion Forum
Get It All!
UNLIMITED Membership is like taking a master class in woodworking for less than $10 a month.
Start Your Free TrialCategories
Discussion Forum
Digital Plans Library
Member exclusive! – Plans for everyone – from beginners to experts – right at your fingertips.
Highlights
-
Shape Your Skills
when you sign up for our emails
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. -
Shop Talk Live Podcast -
Our favorite articles and videos -
E-Learning Courses from Fine Woodworking
-
-
Replies
I take it that this engraver is not an attachment to a Dremmel tool, but a separate Dremmel tool itself? Years ago when I was turning a lot of bowls I used a drafting pen filled with India ink. It had a very fine hollow point with a wire running thru it that controlled the ammount of ink coming to the point and I think it was called a
Rapid-o-graph pen. Worked like a charm.
Correct - it is a separate tool, not an attachment.
http://www.amazon.com/Dremel-290-01-Stroke-Engraver-Template/dp/B0000302YN
When using India ink, did you sign before or after finishing? How is the wear-resistance, and would certain finishes such as lacquer make the ink run?
Chris,
Most high end flyrod signatures and rod info are done with India and it's put on just before final coat with a 000 brush but a Rapidograph or Rotoring will do just fine. I seem to remember than some of the more prominent Shaker people who article up for FWW sign in India.
BB
I use a burner. I'd post a
I use a burner. I'd post a picture, but this stupid format won't let me.
Jeff thinking this forum is knot-interesting anymore
I use a "standard" burner plate; "Handcrafted by Jerry Frost". Then I add the month and year of completion and my initials with a permanent felt marker. I have found that I get the best results if I apply a sealer coat before the signature and date; it eliminates bleeding.
Jeff, yesterday I added a photo to a post. I found it even easier and faster then before. You might try it again.
Jerry
I think you will find that you can add a photo to an original post but not to a reply. Hopefully they are working on that.
Hello Frosty,
I have been able to add a photo to a post only if starting a new one. For example, in this reply to you there is no way to add a photo that I can see.
I see what you and dgreen mean. I hope someone has posted this as a bug. A photo would be of big help in illustrating a solution to a problem. Thanks.
Jeff,
Ever since Derek Cohen pointed out the facility, I've been using Photobucket's free web picture-hosting facility to locate those pics I want to paste into a forum like this one. It's better than a forum-dedicated pic poster as:
You only have to post the pic once, to Photobucket, and then reference that pic with a copy/paste or via the Photobucket-supplied linking mechanisms. (Various websites prefer various linking methods). You can do this from any and all forums, blogs, webmail services or other websites in which you can make some form of post.
Photobucket has a picture naming, tagging and resizing facility built-in. There are a few other editing tools, should your original pics need a bit of brightening or other simple improvement.
When you point to pics this way from a forum post, the pics are embedded as such in the post so there's no need to open them in a new tab or window. The person viewing sees an integrated words & pic thang.
Try it you'll like it - unless you're not into liking things just now. :-)
Lataxe
Testing:
View Image
Thanks Lataxe
Mike,
No, no - thank YOU! :-)
Lataxe, always aprrrrreciative of a fine hock and also [***censored***].
Hello Mr. Lataxe,
Thank you for the Photobucket tip. I have uploaded a few pics to thr site, but I still don't see how to post them here. Can you give me anymore datails?
Test. By George I think I've
Test. By George I think I've got it!
View Image
bob, looks like you got it!
Just for anyone else looking to post pictures. When you have your pictures open in the Photobucket album, click on the photo you want to upload. You should see "share this image" on the left side, Choose the HTML format, right click and copy the link, and then paste into the message.
Morgan
Bob,
It used to be you could just copy/paste them but now you must grab and paste their html tags.
If you hover the mouse pointer over a pic thumbnail in the Photobucket page of photos you have uploaded and are viewing, a small box drops down containing various computing gizmo-blurts. One of these is "HTML code". Put the mousey ponter over the hieroglyphics to the right of "HTML code" and select/copy them.
Return to the FWW tab/window where you are typing your words into the "comment/reply" box and paste the stuff you have just copied. It appears as a dirty-geet-lump of computer gobbledeygook. However, when you use the "preview" button to preview how your reply will look when posted ("saved"), up pop the pickshers you have just pasted the HTML code for.
Don't delete the photos in Photobucket, mind, as then the link using the "html code" cannot pull up the picksher into Knots anymore.
If this is still confusing (it confused me, especially as different websites want different gobbledegook-stuff as their link-thang) then drop another post in.
View Image
Lataxe (shootin' arrers on New Year's Day)
Oh dear Lataxe, you should be careful, you could put an eye out! Wait, your not aiming at the poor little skipper in my previous post are you? Though I must admit, it might make for a tasty bit of a snack.
Bob, now running from the ASPCA!
Lataxe,
Is that the famous "Purple Martin Hood" who takes from the rich in Lancashire (Nottingham) and gives thusly to the poor pensioner's shed in Galgate?
Twer I were the sheriff there I would haf to arrest thee for wearing "Little John's" johns.
Have a good new year,
Boiler
BB,
That is my speshul thwoking garb, which consists of green thangs for camouflage (one may need to sneek up on a bambi), the royal purple bonnet (I am Prince of Galgate, oh yes I am), muckboots to keep Farmer Giles clarts at bay and bagtrouser enprinted with barbed wire to ensure passing ladies overcome with lust at my manly aspect cannot claw their way toward their naughty desire.
An alternative explanation is that I am a daft auld phart who is wrapped up agin the cold and wet, since his bone may chill as he entertains fantasies concerning the seeing-orf of invading Frenchmen or even the odd former colonial.
Lataxe, playboy of the Eastern Field (just by the railway embankment).
A handsome kit indeed, just right for taking the Princess of Galgate out to the pub. Now just wear your bike racin kit under it, skip out to the loo, toss off the outers and strut back in! Nothing like spandex shorts to make all the gals envious of the fine catch the Princess has made.
Test
Good Lord Lataxe ,
I just laid mine eyes on this pixture and ghotta tell you , any one even remotely resembling this look would be a target themselves round these parts . With Neighborhood Watch and such they would have you in the Loony bin fast , I think it was the pants tucked into the booots in conjunction with the weaponry .
your worried pal dusty
Dusty,
Yes, there is a fine line atween "dear ole village eccentric" and "crazy loon obviously about to run amok and fatally pierce innocent citizens or worse". It's all about the degree of paranoia in the average villager.
Now, as you know, modern noospapers and other daily frighteners are even now inducing the citizenry into a generalised state of fear. There are, so they rumour, dark-doings everywhere and the doers are even darker. Watch out for the abnormal! (Abnormal is a moveable definition, so it is difficult, never mind irrelevant, to watch out for it).
So, I have been going around knocking off the television ariels and burning down newsagents. I have not yet thwoked the paper-delivery children with that bow an' arrer but I may have to set humane traps for them. After all, they are unwitting pawns in the evil conspiracies of Murdochs and other fear-mongering orcs.
So, I am doing the citizens a favour by preventing them from being bogeythinged into anxiety-filled trembling cowerers ahind their twitching curtains. They can see that I really am just a friendly ole eccentric with a confused fashion-sense. "Look", they will cry, "no bogeyman but merely a jesting pensioner".
Why man, we may once more be able to dance around the village maypole without having to look over our shoulders for a dark person with a pole axe! Gallows Gate will be merrie again and the rhubarb wine will flow freely along with the cakes and ale. Huzzah!
Lataxe, agin' that everyday conformity to media men's zeitgeists of fear.
Testing a bit here as well. Thanks, I remember that from Derek as well but never used it. Easy as can be to set up Photobucket. Seems my image size is to large as well.
View Image
Though I do think The Horse is bit more interesting!
Sorry Chris for highjacking your post here, the india ink thing works great, until the finish comes off or is removed. I like your engraving idea, much harder to loose over the years. I have a gun that my family carried in the Civil War, that has a sticker stuck on it, india ink writting, and shellac over that. Has held up well for 50 years or more.
AZMO
AZMO said, "Seems my image size is to large as well.
I don't believe it is Azmo as your image is only 639 pixels wide and less than 40kb. It's the lack of width available in the central column that I'd say is the problem, and that's an adjustment Taunton could probably institute very easily. After all, most forums, websites, online catalogues, etc, along with the monitors used to view them will display pictures up to about 800 or 850 pixels wide with ease.
************************************
I have to admit that this new forum format is very off-putting for me. It's hard to see who's posted to whom, and there seems no rhyme nor reason to the order of posts, except for a very hard to spot indentation of one post below another. I've spotted a few times that there are new posts in a thread, and when I go to look at them I have no idea which are the new posts as they seem to all over the place instead of all at the end; and it's not as if you can refer to a threaded list or something to show what is in response to what. That's why my posting frequency has dropped off considerably since the change-- it's too much fiddling and faffing at the moment, but perhaps I'll get more used to this new format with time. Slainte.
Richard,
Any fule no one cannot have too much fiddlin' and faffin'. It is what makes us British, especially in the northern clime. Why, they used to teach fiddlin & faffin' for the whole of Tuesday afternoons when I were at skool. It was just after the art class.
As to this unnatural attachment you lads have to linear conversations! Well, shurely you have been in the pub after half past nine, when one must be able to deal with 5 conversations at once, some of which go backwards and others of which consist of completely random utterances.
Anyroadup, there was a scientist on the tele the other night who reckoned time, cause & effect and other Newtonian notions are all just queer human inventions. Perhaps we are all just collections of quarks clustering around a few strange attractors?
On the other hand, it may be my bedtime.
Lataxe, who always liked a tangent.
Well Lataxe. I guess I've
Well Lataxe. I guess I've started posting more frequently again. I do however dislike this forum format.
I've just dropped into this thread because it says there are 13 new posts for me to read. I can't work out which posts are new because there's nothing identify them. About the only thing that might indicate a post I'm reading is new to me is the date of posting which has to be looked for carefully to see if it's more recent than my last visit to the thread-- I can't recall when that was though, so there's the difficulty, although I do recognise the text in some of the posts from previous scannings.
I suppose I'll have to get to like the fiddling and faffing, or give up on the forum, ha, ha. Slainte.
The ink signature was put on after the finish. On bowls the sig was underneath the piece, on the bottom. I just looked at some that I turned in the early 1990s and they are clear and not worn, however the bowls don't get moved around a lot. Some were just wax finishes burnished into the spinning surface. It's nice to look underneath once in a while as I dated all of them.
The electro-engraver is a good idea for fine detail. But, doesn't it leave a bit of fuzz?
I just stamp my stuff with a Masonic double-eagle, and date it all 1776 in an appropriately-colonial font. ;-)
Ralph,
The engraver does not leave any fuzz. But if I move the tool too quickly, the tool does leave it's mark in the form of a bunch of dots, rather than a smooth "groove" if I move the tool at a slower pace.
"date it all 1776"
That would make you how old then?
To all,
No worries "hijacking" my thread. It's interesting all the same.
"date it all 1776"
That would make you how old then?
Since my first job was helping to build Stonehenge, I suppose 1776 is cheating a bit, eh? ;-)
(No subject)
View Image
Doesn't that require feeding
Doesn't that require feeding the piece through your inkjet printer? Besides, fine woodworkers aren't supposed to use nails. ;-)
Testing of piktures ex Picasa:View ImageFrom Honda CB1300S with Scorpion muffler
DANG! It has worked: now how to remember how to do it next time.
(I did not use Photopbucket, I use Picasa)
Thanks be to Chief Lataxeof Gallows Gate.
Philip,
When you remember wot U did please post the method. I might try that Pickaxe.
Also, I notice that Derek uses Photobucket but manages to post pics without a Larry-frightening link to the Photobucket site itself, with it's terrible flashes and bangs, brain curdling adverts and other stuff that sensitive fellows cannot abide. How does Mr Cohen do it, eh, eh?
I can post a link to just a (Photobucket) picture (sans their surrounding site-circus) but this is a link rather than an embedded picture in the thread. Also, it requires one link per picture. However, it avoids those flash/bang adverts and so forth. (One likes to please the less resilient among us).
Lataxe
PS I am Prince of Gallows Gate not a mere chief. Chiefs are 3 a penny around here. Mind, just about every Galgate bloke also counts hisself a king, so I am thereby a relative nonetity. I am looking for promotion to Emperor, which may require a new hat.
My Lord,
I shall do my best, being no computer jockey, myself.
I select the Picasa option "upload to web album" and send the selected pictures there, then click "view pictures online" (and check that they are in fact the chosen ones) then there are numerous options appearing , such as "link to this album", which one clicks expectantly, and "PasteHTML to embed in website" which one clicks "copy"-which is wotusee below after pasting into Knots.
trouble is there are so many options yet unexplored and i haven't worked out how to add words in between the piktures.
I must say I find Picasa to be mighty convenient after having tried Photobucket.
View Imagepictures knots testing ....
BUT, now I see it has only done one picture when I wanted six....So another attempt:
View Imagepictures knots testing ....
I give up for now....
Philip,
I can click on your pic and go to the 6 pics in your Pixieactor site. I notice they are an eclectic collection.
Now, looking at that bonnet you sport, I feel you are ready for barbedwire trooser and muckboots. I'm sure these will be welcomed by all your neighbours in NZ, which is known for its fond treatment of non-conformists.
The garb would be especially effective as you charge about on that vroomer, although I advise you not to fall off it as the ambulance men will have little sympathy and may decide to apply an extreme cure to one obviously more intent on looking good than protecting hisself from vroomer-wobble and gravel-bite.
Lataxe
Don't know about what hat you
Don't know about what hat you should sport, but in the spirit of woodworking, shouldn't you be drawing a longbow hewn from stout English yew. Remember Agincourt.
Thank you that is magical and I learn a new thing-but how is an ordinary mortal supposed to know this fine trick without a sign post of some sort?
That headgear was used long ago to mop up some oils etc during a surface grinder crisis so Iyam happy to say that it is long gone....
Chris,
Have you thought about getting a laser engraver? They are quire precise, and very readable.
All frivolousness aside, I don't think it is worth worrying about how you sign your work. It's a lot like an author worring about what pseudonym to adopt. Probably better to spend your excess time thinking about "first order" effects, such as furniture design and execution, and finding customers.
Have fun.
Mel
Hi Mel ,
I have to agree worrying how one signs his work is not connected to quality or success .
I was not going to comment on this thread until your post but honestly maybe it's just me when a client pays me good money to build a piece and asks me to sign it I always do but other wise to me it is an over zealous step of the maker .
I know if I built it and so does the client .
Beside some times I build for other shops and they don't want my name on the work so by habbit I sign little except the back of the check.
regards from Paradise dusty
Dusty,
I am amazed by how often you agree with my "non standard" off-beat ideas on woodworking. Maybe we are twins, separated at birth.
But maybe I am wrong on this one. I watch Antiques Roadshow. The experts love to have a lot of info on the maker of a piece and when the piece was made and for whom. So maybe we should all woodburn in a few paragraphs on the inside of each cabinet about what we did. Maybe that will make our piece worth hundreds of thousands more than they ordinarily would be worth, in the future.
I usually take my $10 woodburner, and put something like
"M.D.M. 2010" on the bottom or in the back. I am sure that if I spent a few thousands of dollars on a nice laser engraver, it would look better. Ha ha. Keep making them boxes, Dusty. These days, I am making more toys. Two grandchildren here, and two more coming. YIPPEE. By the way, neither of the two grandchildren seems to care much if I sign the toys. One sucks on the toys, and the other sees how far he can throw them. I need to find a way to get more respect. :-)
Have fun.
Mel
Hi Mel,
It seems your post got lost among the rest on attachments, hence my delayed response time. Personally, I dislike laser engravers for the same reason as branding irons - they are too uniform. Since I first started this thread, I've realized one downside of engraving - it is very hard to do on woods like oak, as the tip just dives into every grain line.
I use a similar (but more radical) method that I read about in some WW mag. I use a Dremel tool mounted in a small plunge router base. I write the required info on a piece of blue painters tape. When everything is looking good, I stick the blue tape to the project and go over it with the Dremel. I then use a Q-tip and "Old English" scratch cover to highlight the writing, let it dry just a few seconds then wipe it off. I like it because it's personal--actually my writing just using a different tool.
Regards,
Mack
Mack,
"personal--actually my writing just using a different tool."
Reminded me of an old story. Seems that an old farmer went to see his neighbor one winter's day. "I want you to tell your boy to stop coming over to see my girl Betty."
"Well, why would you want that?"
"Just the other day, I found his name written in pi$$, in the snow, out behind the barn."
"Aww, Earl, I reckon you're gonna tell me you never did that when you was a young'un."
"Dammit Jack, don't you think I know my own daughter's handwritin??!"
Ray
Injun Rider ,
That was a good one .
dusty , maker of designer kindling
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled