Rubber
Stamp
Carving
Tools
There are several tools you will need to carve rubber stamps,
but
note that you might not need all of these. You'll need to read
further to decide if you really need them all.
- Magnifying lenses
- Lamp
- Hobby knife
- Gouges
- Carving needles
- Wire knife
- Sharpening tools
Before you start shopping, a word about coupons: If
you
need to buy anything at Michael's, JoAnn Fabrics, Hobby Lobby, A. C.
Moore or
similar hobby and craft shops, you might want to look for coupons
first. All of these stores often put a
40% off coupon in the local Sunday paper, and sometimes even a 50% off
coupon. It's usually only good on one
item,
but if one item is all you need, it's a good deal. You can, of
course,
buy all the items you need one at a time, one per week. Or you
can
collect coupons from all your neighbors' newspapers. Sometimes
you can sign up for their special customer registration and they'll
send you coupons by e-mail that you can print on your own computer.
And sometimes these stores will accept each others' coupons.
Doesn't hurt to
ask.
MAGNIFYING LENSES
When you carve rubber stamps, seeing up close and tiny is
important,
especially if you're over 40 and your eyes don't work like they used
to. Buy a cheap pair of reading
glasses,
the strongest you can find, like +3.0 or +3.5 or
whatever. These are way too strong for reading; the only way
you'll be able
to focus is to hold things six inches from your nose. That's just
what
you need! This is a good idea even if you're young and your
eyes still work up close, as it'll reduce eye strain.
If you didn't believe that last paragraph, I urge you to
reconsider. The use of strong magnification is arguably the
most important tip on this site.
Michael's
offers such reading glasses dirt cheap, like $1 per pair -- and that's before your 40% off coupon.
You can also buy them at dollar stores. There are
lots of places that sell such reading glasses for less than $10,
including just about any drug store.
If you must wear prescription glasses for astigmatism, you probably
can't use generic reading glasses, and you're probably not interested
in buying a special pair of prescription glasses just for close
work. You
will need to find another method of magnification. One method is
to buy one of those lamps with a magnifying glass in it.
Another idea would be to purchase a magnifying visor.
You can also get a magnifying glass that mounts on a small stand
that you can position over your work.
LAMP
You'll want lots of light. I mean lots. In fact, my
preference is to carve outdoors in direct sunlight if the weather
permits. If you're working indoors, a strong desk lamp right over
your work would be good; two lamps would be better! The new
"compact
flourescent" lights designed to replace regular light bulbs are
especially nice here because you can get a lot of light up close to
your work without a lot
of heat.
Some people prefer a "high intensity" light, a really bright
incandescent bulb with clear glass. The reason is that, besides
providing a good amount of light, the light all coming from one point
(rather than the entire tube surface of a flourescent, for example)
highlights the surface detail of the item you're working on. If
you want to try this, a halogen bulb is recommended; they last much
longer than regular bulbs and provide whiter light.
HOBBY KNIFE
You'll need a hobby knife. The traditional hobby knife is
the
X-Acto brand with a #11
blade...
Another excellent choice is the Excel hobby knife. It's available
at HobbyTown and comes with "HobbyTown" stamped on the handle -- but it
doesn't say "Excel" on it anywhere. It's also
available at Hobby Lobby -- with Hobby Lobby stamped on the
handle. Wherever you get it, it's an excellent knife. Excel
claims that "the difference is in the edge", and true enough, their
blades are really sharp.
There are also cheaper hobby knives available from places like dollar
stores, Big Lots, etc. An X-Acto knife has
an aluminum collet that
clamps down onto the blade. These cheap hobby knives often have
plastic
collets. Some of these are better than
others -- the difference being in how well the aluminum handle holds
the plastic collet -- but in general you'd want to use these only for
the actual carving, not for heavier tasks such as slicing a chunk off
your block of carving rubber. Really, the all-aluminum hobby
knives only cost a couple of bucks; just get one.
There are also hobby knives in which the handle is hollow through its
entire length, the collet is the entire length of the handle, and the
tightening nut is on the back end rather than up front where you grip
it. These type are better for two reasons: First, when you
are applying a lot of force,
trying to cut something tough, the joint where the parts come together
isn't right under your thumb, it's at the other end. The end
you're pushing on is a straight tube, far less likely to bend or break
under the stress. Second, if you want to, you can recess a blade
way down into the collet so just a tiny tip of it protrudes.
There are also hobby knives that are not pencil-shaped but rather come
in an assortment of shapes. There are handles that are
rectangular in cross section, which may make it easier to keep the
blade facing in the correct direction. There are even hobby
knives that fit around the index finger.
Regarding the blades themselves, the Excel and
X-Acto #11
blades are stout
and
sturdy, being about .020" thick. While excellent quality and
great for
many tasks, this makes them a bit too large and clumsy for detailed
rubber stamp carving. The blades in some of the cheaper sets are
only
about
.015" thick which means they're thinner and
more flexible than the X-Acto blade, which is beneficial here. I
believe the Testors blades are also thinner than the
X-Acto. If you
already have an X-Acto knife, you might want to purchase a set of
Testors blades and try them in it.
If you're a doctor, you
can steal a surgical scalpel from work. Interestingly, the most
common surgical blade is also called a #11, although it's shaped
slightly differently than the X-Acto #11. Surprisingly,
scalpel blades haven't proven especially good for rubber stamp
carving. The X-Acto #11 is probably better.
One other tidbit about hobby knives: When you get to carving very
tiny details, you'd think you want the smallest blade. However,
what you really want is the blade with the pointiest tip, which is not
necessarily the same thing. Here are some blades:
The one on the far left would be really lousy for carving rubber
stamps. The angle of the cutting edge forms such a blunt angle at
the tip that you'll have trouble cutting any details. It might
work OK for making long, straight cuts.
Moving to the right we find increasingly better blades because the
angle formed at the tip is more acute. As a result, the very
point -- which is the part you actually carve with -- is increasingly
tiny and slender.
The second from right is a standard X-Acto #11. The one on the
far right is from a cheap set from Big Lots.
It's
easy
to
change
direction
mid-cut
with such a blade, because you
can easily turn the tip in the rubber.
GOUGES
Buy a Staedtler 1V gouge. Period. End of discussion.
Generally, to get a 1V you'll have to buy the entire Staedtler set of
three gouges for about $20:
There's nothing interchangeable about the nibs, you're buying a
set of
complete
tools. The cutting edges of these tools are
U- or V-shaped, and the nib is gently curved to enable smoothly
cutting out a groove with one pass. The 1V is the one at the top
in the picture, and with it you can easily remove a sliver of rubber
the size of a human hair from the surface of a piece of rubber.
It's
the tool used for 95% of the rubber stamp carving duties, with the
others only used for removing great big chunks of rubber.
There is one way to buy the 1V by itself, and that's to buy from
Webfoot at stampeaz.com.
That is
reportedly the only place
where you can buy the Staedtler 1V without buying the 2V and 5U as
well.
Buy some Brilliance Dew Drop ink pads while you're there. And
don't
lose the invoice that comes with your order; Webfoot applies a rubber
stamp image to them, and you can log them as letterboxing finds on
AtlasQuest.com.
The Staedtler 1V is essential for detailed carving, but larger gouges
are nice to have for other duties such as hacking big chunks of rubber
out of a stamp. You could just buy the whole
Staedtler set. But it'd probably be cheaper to just buy the
single Staedtler 1V from stampeaz.com and buy a Speedball
"CUTTER SET For Block
Printing" for the other needs. The Speedball set
includes a cutter handle
and five interchangeable cutter blades.
The blades included in the
package are #1, #2, #3, #5, and #6. The #1 is the smallest, but
it still makes a groove twice as wide as a Staedtler 1V.
The handle is a rounded plastic affair with a chuck on
the end that securely clamps down onto the blade. It's hollow and
it's possible to pry the
back end off and hide
blades inside, although that doesn't appear to be the intention of the
design.
Hobby Lobby now offers a blatant copy of the Speedball Cutter Set, with
a handle that looks almost exactly the same except it's a different
color and five nibs that are essentially identical. This set
sells for considerably less than the Speedball product. As of
this writing I have no reports on whether this kit is any good, but it
certainly appears to be usable.
The bulbous handle that comes with these kits is well-suited for
applying great force while
digging a groove. However, you're cutting rubber, and great force
is
not required. Rather than constantly swapping nibs out on the
single handle, many opt to purchase some Speedball "pen holders",
which are often sold nearby on the same shelf as the cutter set for
less
than $2 each, and press one nib into each handle. The bulbous
handle is a good choice for holding the #5, which is a large U-shaped
nib for scooping out big chunks; put all the other nibs into these
slender pen holders.
You can also just buy a length of 1/4" wooden dowel and
attach the nib with glue, wire and/or tape. Get enough dowels to
make handles for each nib, as you won't want to have to swap nibs on
the same handle.
Some people opt to use no holder at all, just hold the nib itself
between the thumb and forefinger. This actually works better than
you'd expect.
Speedball also offers a "Speedy-Stamp Stamp Making Kit"
which includes
a cutter handle, two cutter blades, a 4" x 6" piece of
Speedy-Carve pink
rubber, and a booklet of ideas and tips.
It looks like a good
starter kit, but there are two downsides to it. First, the cutter
handle included is a cheap wooden handle rather than the nice plastic
handle with the metal chuck shown above. Second, the two
cutter blades included are a #2 and a #4, not the most generally useful
blades.
There are other brands of gouges available, including some rather
expensive "woodcutting" tools, but none are any better than the
Staedtler 1V for detail carving.
Nasco also offers sets of lino cutters,
including
wooden
handles
in
either
palm-grip
or pen-shaped
versions. Those pen-shaped handles come in a box of 12 (Nasco is
actually a classroom supply outfit), but they're still not too
expensive.
Speedball also offers some supposedly safer lino cutters that look
similar from a distance but you pull them across the rubber rather than
push. Hence, the sharp edge isn't right out front where you can
hurt yourself with it, it's underneath and facing the holder.
I've never tried them myself, but reports indicate that they do work but not particularly well.
Having both the hobby knife and the set of gouges is
best, obviously,
but you can make do with just the hobby knife. It's work, though,
since you must make slice after slice side-by-side to remove rubber
over a broad area. It's just easier to have a couple of gouges on
hand, even if you're a hobby knife carver.
MODIFIED GOUGES
For those who want more detail than they can get from off-the-shelf
carving tools, there are three popular modifications of gouges: Pinching, reversing, and miniaturization.
I
personally developed the last idea, the miniaturization.
CARVING
NEEDLES
When you get to the point where you just can't figure out how
you're
supposed to carve any serious detail with those big, clunky hobby
knives and gouges, you're ready for a set of carving needles.
Because it's not obvious, I'll describe how they are used:
Pretty
much the same way as the hobby knife. It doesn't look like a
hobby knife; in fact, it looks more like a gouge. It won't work
at all as a gouge, though, it just digs in if you try. You use it
the same way you'd
use a
very tiny hobby knife. Slice with one side of that tip; you've
got
two
sides to work with.
Where do you buy carving needles? Actually, you buy the
components and assemble your own set. The handle is what's known
as a "pin vise" and can be purchased locally from Hobby Lobby or other
hobby shops or from ehobbytools.com
or you can do a web search for other sources. You can select a
single-ended pin vise:
(the knob end is removable, revealing a place to store the unused
collet)
or a double-ended pin vise:
Offhand, I'd suggest the single-ended; there's only half the
chance
you'll accidentally stick yourself. Of course, you could buy the
double-ended pin vise and only install a needle in one end at a time.
There are cheaper versions than those shown. The collets shown
have four sizes of opening so they'll hold just about any size needle
you want, and you can bury the needle quite a ways. Cheaper pin
vises have no removable collets but rather just a chuck formed in the
end of the handle itself. With these, you're far more limited in what
needles will fit -- too large won't go in, too small will fall
out. And the needles might bottom in the hole, requiring you to
cut the needle
shorter to get it to protrude the right amount.
The X-Acto hobby knife usually comes with a collet with only a single
split for holding the blade, but the Excel hobby knife has two splits
forming an X when you
look at it end-on. The Excel type will work as a pin vise,
although they'll only hold a pretty small needle, about a 19 or 20
gauge. Still, it's an attractive option because the hobby knife
handle is lightweight aluminum, long and slender and comfortable to
hold, while the regular pin vises are often steel, heavy, and somewhat
short and clunky to hold. Plus, if you choose an Excel hobby
knife to begin with, you can try using it with either the blade or the
needle and see how you like it.
Other types of hobby knives sometimes have a collet with a single split
but there's also a pilot hole down the center of the split for holding
something wire- or needle-shaped, but again you'll need to use exactly
the right size needle with it.
The carving needles themselves are, in fact, standard hypodermic
needles.
They come
with razor sharp edges right out of the package, and are available in
many sizes. You'll need to cut the other end off, the end with a
collar that attaches the needle to a syringe, in order to install it
into the pin vise. Some people get the wrong idea and try to
carve with the needle holding it by the collar, and sometimes even
still attached to a syringe. This is like trying to write while
holding a pencil by the eraser end.
To begin with, go to a feed store and ask about needles intended for
horses. You'll find some really big needles -- big enough to make
you thank your lucky stars you're not a horse -- and these big needles
are the most useful for carving rubber stamps. You should be able
to find 16 gauge, 18 gauge, and possibly 14 and 12 gauge needles.
Be
sure to get long ones; the short needles are barely long enough to
chuck up in a pin vise. Here's what the needle looks like when
you buy it:
This thing cost me 35¢. Here's what it looks like when
you
open the package:
You'll need to cut the needle itself off that collar, and throw
the
rest away.
When you want smaller needles for really detailed work, go to your
local pharmacy and ask for needles for human beings. In
general, they're not out where you can get at them, they're behind the
pharmacy counter, but all you have to do is ask; no prescription
required. I just tell them what I want them for, to which they
usually reply "Good idea!"
You'll be offered
needles around 19 gauge to 25 gauge -- be sure to get the long ones
again. Often the needle comes attached to a syringe, but they're
still only 30¢ each or so. If you ask for a "larger" needle,
the clerk will always presume
you mean you want a larger syringe, more cc's. You'll go back and
forth a coupla times trying to get through that you want the needle
itself larger and couldn't care less about the size of the syringe
attached.
The latest thing in hypodermic needles are retractable needles.
You use them once, and the needle itself pops back inside the syringe
so you can't stick yourself with it. I haven't run across one of
these myself yet, but hopefully since you won't be shooting up with it
you can cut the needle off before it gets a chance to retract. We
might need to hope so, since reportedly these retractable needles will
be increasingly popular thanks to liability concerns.
WIRE KNIVES
Better idea: Skip the carving needles altogether
and fabricate a "wire knife" instead. It is my own invention, so
I provide a description on how to make
one. A wire knife will handle whatever the carver is capable
of carving; there will never be any call for anything smaller or more
precise. And it's easier to get used to using than carving
needles.
CUSTOM TOOLS
You can actually create custom cutting tools if you're
handy. It's possible to grind a hobby knife blade into an
entirely new shape and then grind a new edge on it and sharpen it up --
or you can cut only on the back edge or mounting tang, leaving the
original cutting edge intact. The obvious thing to start with is
another cutting tool, but you can actually make cutters out of all
sorts of things. Rubber isn't difficult to cut, you don't need
surgical steel to cut it. Sometimes, when you need to create a
particular type of cut -- especially if you need to make the same cut a
lot of times -- the thing to do is to make a tool just for the job.
SHARPENING TOOLS
You should sharpen your cutting tools occasionally, so you'll need
sharpening tools. Go to a fine sporting
goods or knife store and see
what they have in sharpening stones. Tell them you want a really
fine one; the thing that looks like a gray chunk of concrete with a
coarse side and a fine side will not
work here, both sides are far too coarse. With any luck at all,
you'll be able to get a small, very fine "Arkansas" stone for just a
few bucks. If they have
something ceramic you might check it out; ceramic is even finer
than Arkansas stone. Be sure to get something with a flat
surface; you can't use rods or other shapes for sharpening stamp
carving tools effectively. If you get an
Arkansas stone you should also get some honing oil; it's essential with
an Arkansas stone.
Alternatively, you can get a diamond hone. Harbor Freight Tools
offers several models, usually with multiple surfaces with different
grits. You'll be using the finer grits, 400 and 600, for this
job. Don't use honing oil with diamond hones, just use them dry;
you can rub the metal dust right off them with your finger when
done. The problem with diamond hones is that they are covered
with holes, which might work for knives but it just ruins their use for
sharpening hobby knives and gouges. Look for a diamond hone that
has a flat area on the end beyond the holes that you can use. You
only need a couple of square inches.
Some have also had success with a very fine sandpaper, 400 or 600 grit,
taped down onto a very flat, hard surface such as a piece of plate
glass. While this works, you have to be careful to move the tools
only in the pulling direction; trying to slide the tool in the wrong
direction across the sandpaper may cause it to tear, or even if it
doesn't tear in might bunch up a bit and dull your tool rather than
sharpen it.
You can
sharpen the hobby knife blades just as you
would
hone a knife: Hold the blade flat against the stone and tilt the
back side up just enough so that the cutting edge contacts the surface
of the stone.
Make
about a dozen circular motions, then flip it over and repeat. As
you finish, make the last couple of strokes feather light and swap
sides each stroke. You
won't believe how much better this'll make the blade cut -- even
compared to a new blade. You also won't believe how long it'll
make a blade last.
You also should sharpen the gouges every now and
then. Sharpening gouges is more involved, so I have established
an entire web page
describing the process.
Navigate to:
