Hand Stamp Spacing Guide

[Paul-in-Plymouth]

Anyone who has ever tried to stamp a tidy-looking inscription using loose hand stamps will understand the word “exasperation.”  Lee Valley to the rescue with a Hand Stamp Spacing Guide.  http://www.leevalley.com/us/wood/page.as...3456,43461    

Why would I want one?  Here’s the story:  I like to make small wooden gifts for people and often wrote the recipient’s name with the year and my initials someplace inconspicuous.   A couple years ago I developed a persistent tremor in my dominant hand.  Handwriting became impossible.  I bought a set of hand stamps as an alternative, but struggled with consistent spacing and alignment.  Woodworking suffered too: hand tools increasingly became an exercise in frustration and surprise;  power tools became an unwise adventure. 

About a year ago my problem was diagnosed as Parkinson’s disease.  Bad news, but the better news is that some symptoms can be relieved with medication, at least for a while.  That includes the tremor I experience.  It took several months to get things under control, but now I can again do most things I used to do with hand tools.  I am slowly regaining my confidence with power.  However, the handwriting remains too chancy to try on a finished piece.  Meanwhile, my sisters’ grandkids are having kids of their own, one after another it seems, and there are wooden toys to be made and inscribed.   

So, I was delighted to see the Hand Stamp Spacing Guide appear in “What’s New?” on the Lee Valley website a few weeks ago.  Got one in my next order, just in time for this little car for my nephew’s grandson.

The guide consists of a 6” rule with scales for 4 spacings and a magnetic slider that holds the stamp and slides on the rule.  It works very well.  The main complication I found came with stamping centered inscriptions.  Getting them precisely centered required a little straight-forward process development.  Glad I tried it out first on some scrap, though. 


 I blackened the impressions with India ink for visibility on the walnut.  Any eruption around the impressions disappears with a few strokes of a very fine-set smoothing plane.


I also shimmed the slot in the slider that holds the stamp.  My “3-mm” stamps have a shank a full 0.250” square or 6.35 mm.  The slot measures 0.262” or 6.65 mm wide, more allowance than really needed for easy insertion and removal.  I found it was still easy to use if I shimmed the opening with tape by a much as 8-mils to reduce variability in spacing.



 BTW, the little car was largely a spokeshave project patterned after the classic Creative Playthings VW from the 1950s.   My kids had some of these, produced, I think, in Finland in the 1970s.  It’s a simple wood-shaping exercise, but I’m very happy and thankful to be doing anything back in the shop again.  Every day’s a gift.

[BloomingtonMike]

Great job on the car. Thank you for the story and heads up on the spacer jig.

[Herb G]

I have several sets of steel stamps I inherited from my Dad.
They are constructed so that when you stamp the 1st impression, you simply align the 2nd stamp with the 1st one & it provides proper spacing.
Meaning you stamp "A", and put it back in the impression when you get the "B" stamp, align the stamps side by side. Then strike the 2nd stamp, and so on.

It is the same on every set of my stamps.

That is a cool tool though, but my stamps sets are all different sizes.

[Rob Young]

I have several sets of steel stamps I inherited from my Dad.
They are constructed so that when you stamp the 1st impression, you simply align the 2nd stamp with the 1st one & it provides proper spacing.
Meaning you stamp "A", and put it back in the impression when you get the "B" stamp, align the stamps side by side. Then strike the 2nd stamp, and so on.

It is the same on every set of my stamps.

That is a cool tool though, but my stamps sets are all different sizes.

I've done the same with my small set. However I feel it puts the letters too far apart.

Bought one of the spacers on the last round of free shipping and have tested it out.  I like that I can move the letters closer and retain alignment.

[Paul-in-Plymouth]

I tried indexing the next stamp on the side of the current also, as you suggest, but also found the spacing between letters too big for my liking, and more degrees of freedom than extra hands to manage them.  The LV Spacing Guide makes it simple to stamp a neat, well spaced inscription.