METAL STAMPING FOR JEWELLERY

Elana’s Tips, Tricks & Troubleshooting
METAL STAMPING FOR JEWELLERY
COPYRIGHT Elana Promislow 2018

Use masking or painters tape to line up your letter stamps.

Practice your alignment by swatching your stamp on paper using an ink pad. This can
also help you determine which is the right direction, as it can sometimes be confusing
when looking at the stamp directly.

Use a permanent marker, or a dot of nail polish on the side of your stamp to make it
quicker to place correctly.

Highlight your stamped areas by colouring them in with a permanent marker, then wipe
away the excess with a Eurotool polishing pad.

Cover your steel block with an Impressart sticker to prevent marring the bottom of your
piece.

Stamp on soft metals like pewter, aluminium, sterling silver, and copper. Brass and
nickel silver are much harder, and are more difficult to stamp on.

Small stamps and simple letters can be stamped with a single blow. Larger, more
detailed stamps will require more careful hammering using the pivot technique.

Annealing is recommended when stamping long phrases or doing overall texturing with
stamps. Your metal will become brittle and difficult to work with otherwise. If you do
not do torch-work, then confine these types of pieces to very soft metals like pewter
and aluminium.

You can use letter stamps to make borders and patterns. “Y”, “V”, and “I”combine to
make excellent dandelions. Experiment with different size letters.

You can use a single pattern stamp to make a border or overall texture on your piece.

Use markers to map out where you want your stamps to go on your metal. Conversely,
use the grid stickers from Impressart to make this easier.

You can achieve a nice satin finish on your metal by using emery boards.

Curve disks and even squares using a doming punch and dapping block.

You can stamp on finished rings if you use a ring mandrel.

When stamping a very tiny charm, tape it securely to your steel block.