Handicraft for boys

Rubber Stamps

A rubber stamp is type matter molded in rubber which is then mounted on a block with a handle as shown in Fig. 77. When the stamp is inked and then pressed on a smooth surface it leaves an impression on it.

Rubber stamps are useful for marking tags, books, boxes, bundles, etc., but it is very bad taste to use them for letter-heads and envelopes.

How to Make Rubber Stamps.

—The Materials Needed.

—To make rubber stamps you will need (1) one or more fonts of type; (2) a composing stick if you intend setting up more than one line; (3) a frame called a chase, 4 × 5 inches on the sides made of a strip of wood 1 inch wide and 1³⁄₁₆ inch high, which is the height of type from its feet to its shoulder; (4) another frame, called the matrix frame, made of a strip of wood 1 inch wide, ³⁄₈ inch thick and 4 × 5 inches on the sides. These two frames are shown at A and B in Fig. 74. (5) Two smooth boards 1 inch thick, 6 inches wide and 7 inches long; (6) a tooth-brush; (7) a couple of pounds of dental plaster of Paris, and (8) a ¹⁄₄ pound of pure unvulcanized rubber.

Dental plaster is finer than the ordinary kind and you can buy all you will need from your family dentist for 5 or 10 cents a pound. Unvulcanized rubber for rubber stamps comes in sheets about ³⁄₁₆ inch thick and is sold under the name of signature stamp gum and you can buy it for about $1.00 a pound.[72]

Unvulcanized rubber is crude india-rubber mixed with sulphur and when this is heated it gets very soft and can be molded by putting it under pressure; when it gets cold it is not only much stronger than before but it is very elastic as well.

Making the Mold.

—Since you know how to make pewter castings and how to set type, making a rubber stamp will be as easy as rolling off a log.

When you have the type set up that you want to make the rubber stamp of, put a lead[73] on each side of it, oil it all over with sweet oil and tie a string around it tight. Lay the thick, shoulder high wood frame over the type matter you have set and see that it is in the middle of it.

Next mix up a little more than enough plaster with cold water in a bowl to fill the frame; stir it with a tablespoon and make it about as thick as sorghum molasses. Pour the plaster all around the type in the frame and fill up the space between them as high as the face of the type. Now let the plaster set,[74] that is, get hard, which it will do in a very few minutes. When it is hard enough to hold the type in place and yet before it gets solid take the tooth-brush, dip it in water and brush away the plaster until it is exactly even with the frame, and hence, even with the shoulders of the type as shown in Fig. 75.

When the plaster has set hard oil the face of the type and the plaster with sweet oil; now lay the thin frame over the thick frame; mix up some more plaster with water and make it thin enough so that it will flow easily into every little space of the type and fill the frame up with it.

Let this frame stay on the lower frame over night so that it will get very hard and you can then lift it off, when a very sharp impression of the type faces will be formed in it shoulder deep, that is as deep in the plaster as the face of the type is high. This frame with its plaster impression is called the matrix.

Vulcanizing the Rubber.

—Cut a piece of the unvulcanized gum rubber ¹⁄₄ inch wider and longer all round than the impression of the type; peel the strip of muslin from the strip of rubber gum and lay it on the matrix. Put one of the boards on top of the rubber and the other on the bottom of the matrix and screw them together tight with the iron clamps as shown in Fig. 76.

Half fill a kettle with water; lay the mold on top of the kettle—but not in the water—and put both of them in a hot oven for 30 minutes. When the rubber gum gets hot it softens and the pressure of the screws forces it into the letters of the matrix and so makes rubber type of them. The steam from the kettle will keep the wood from charring and the rubber from burning but has no other action on it.

The heat vulcanizes[75] the rubber gum and makes it springy and stretchy, but if it gets too hot it will become hard and you will have hard rubber instead. To get just the right degree of heat a vulcanizer,[76] which is simply a little boiler with a thermometer on top, is used by rubber stamp makers.

Mounting the Rubber.

—All that you need to do now is to trim off the edges of the rubber stamp with a pair of shears and mount it on a smooth block of wood having a handle as shown in Fig. 77.

How to Use a Rubber Stamp.

—A special kind of ink is used for rubber stamps, as writing ink is too thin and printing ink spoils the rubber.

To Make an Ink Pad.

—Cut out two blocks of pine wood each of which is ¹⁄₄ inch thick, 2 inches wide and 3 inches long; cut out four strips of woolen cloth 2 × 3 inches, lay two of the strips on each block and then cover the latter by gluing a piece of muslin over it.

Pour a dozen or 15 drops of rubber stamp ink on each pad and rub the surfaces of both of them together to distribute the ink evenly. When not in use keep their inked surfaces together and in a box so that the dust will not get on them.[77]

To Make Rubber Stamp Inks.

—A Black Ink.

—Mix 3 parts of lampblack with 7 parts of olive oil.

A Red Ink.

—Mix 2 parts of vermilion with 3 parts of olive oil.

A Blue Ink.

—Mix 3 parts of aniline blue and 6 parts of oleic acid with 94 parts of castor oil.

A Green Ink.

—Mix 25 parts of aniline blue, 15 parts aniline lemon yellow, 50 parts oleic acid and castor oil 950 parts.

How to Make a Copygraph Pad.

—A copygraph pad, or hectograph, as it is often called—from the Greek hekaton which means 100, and graph to write, hence to write a hundred—is a gelatine pad for duplicating a letter or a drawing.

To use a copygraph pad you must write your original letter with an aniline ink; then you lay it on the pad and rub it down with your fingers. When you remove the sheet an impression will be left on the face of the pad and if now you lay a sheet of clean paper on the pad, rub it and pull it off you will have a copy almost as bright and clear as the original. In this way as many as 50 or 100 copies of the original letter can be made.

To make a copygraph pad put 1 ounce of the best gelatine in enough water to cover it and let it stand for 24 hours. Put a tablespoonful of table salt into a cup of water, pour it into the outside can of a water jacketed pot. Put 6 ounces of glycerine in the inside pot, set the pot on the stove and heat it good and hot, or to be exact, to about 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

Drain off all the water from the gelatine and put the latter in the glycerine while it is yet on the fire; stir the mixture slowly every once in a while in order to prevent bubbles from forming, and skim off the froth that forms on top of it. When you have a nice smooth mixture stir in a teaspoonful of oil of cloves to keep it sweet.

Next make a pan of sheet zinc a little larger than the letter you want to copy and ¹⁄₂ an inch high, or you can use a tin pie pan if you merely want to try it out. Set the pan on a level table, fill it with the hot mixture, let it stand over night and it is ready to use.

How to Copy a Letter.

—You must write your letter with a special aniline ink, called hectograph ink, and use a new steel pen to do it with.

While the writing is getting dry take a small clean sponge, wet it with cold water, squeeze it as dry as you can, wash the face of the gelatine with it before you try to make an impression or else you will spoil the pad.

This done, lay the sheet of paper with the written side down on the pad and gently rub your fingers over every part of it. Let the paper stay on the pad for a couple of minutes, then grip a corner of it and pull it slowly and evenly from the pad as shown in Fig. 78. Now you are ready to make your copies.

To do this lay a clean sheet of paper on the pad, rub it as you did the original, let it remain for a minute and pull it off. Keep on making copies until you have as many as you want or the impression gets too faint.

When you get through pulling copies wash the face of the pad with a moist sponge and let it dry thoroughly before you make a new copy.

How to Make Hectograph Inks.

—Black Ink.

—Mix 10 parts of methyl violet; 20 parts of nigrosene; 30 parts of glycerine; 5 parts of gum arabic and 60 parts of alcohol. Heat it until the anilines are dissolved and stir until all are thoroughly mixed.

Red Ink.

—Mix 10 parts of fuchsin, 10 parts of alcohol; 10 parts of glycerine and 50 parts of water. Heat and stir as before.

Die Sinking

How to Make Badges, etc.

—It is fascinating work to sink a name into a piece of sheet metal with steel dies and yet it is very easy if you have the tools and you can make some money out of it too, for every boy wants a badge or a medal.

Badges can be made of any kind of sheet metal ¹⁄₆₄ inch thick or more but German silver[78] makes mighty pretty ones for it takes a high polish and remains bright a long time. To cut out a shield, a star or any kind of a badge get a ¹⁄₄ and a ¹⁄₂ inch straight cold chisel and a ¹⁄₄ and a ¹⁄₂ inch curved cold chisel,[79] also a block of hard wood one side of which must be nice and smooth.[80]

Draw the outline of the badge you intend to make on a sheet of metal; lay the latter on the block of wood and then cut it out with your chisels and hammer as shown at A and B in Fig. 79. When you have it cut out, file off the rough edges.

How to Sink the Letters.

—For this part of the work you will need a set of ¹⁄₈ inch steel letters[81] as shown in Fig. 80 and they will cost in the neighborhood of $3.00.

Mark the lines on the badge on which the letters are to be sunk with a very soft lead pencil, or, better, wax the surface all over by tapping it with your finger on which you have rubbed some white wax and then mark the lines with a sharp pointed piece of bone. Otherwise you will have trouble in getting the lines out.

Now lay the badge on a perfectly smooth piece of iron—a flat-iron screwed in a vise, see C, is good. Then take the middle letter of the name you are going to stamp and hold it with the notched side toward you and with the serifs[82] on the lower edge of the letter exactly on the middle of the line you have drawn as shown at D.

Hold the steel letter perfectly straight and give it a goodly blow with the hammer when the die will sink into the metal and leave the impression of the letter below the surface. Finish stamping the name by working both ways from the middle letter, for this is the way to get the name on the badge evenly.

With a set of steel letters and figures you can also stamp key checks, jewelers’ checks, baggage checks and name plates and also sink names on wood, metal, leather, etc.

Finishing Up the Badge.

—The next thing to do is to solder a pin on the back of the badge as shown at E in Fig. 79. Scrape the back up and down the middle bright and clean; put a small safety pin on the badge and hold them together with a pair of tweezers. Then put on a couple of drops of soldering fluid.[83]

Hold the badge with the pin on top of it in the flame of your alcohol lamp or Bunsen burner and when the soldering fluid begins to sizzle touch the pin with a piece of wire solder. When the solder runs let it cool and the pin will be on securely enough for all ordinary purposes.

Next polish up the badge by rubbing it with powdered rottenstone mixed with a little machine oil and then finish it off with some crocus. If you have a lathe of any kind get a felt wheel[84] and use the rottenstone and oil on it and then the crocus.

Heat the stamped surface of the pin just a little and put some black enamel, which you can get at the hardware store, into the letters; rub off all that sticks to the surface but leave all that is in the sunk letters. Put it away and let the enamel dry thoroughly when you will have a regular badge as shown at F.

Burning Brands

A burning brand is useful to mark the handles of tools, boxes or anything made of wood by burning a name or a design into them.

How to Make a Burning Brand.

—To make a burning brand, say with your initials on it, make a cardboard box ³⁄₄ inch wide, 1 inch high and 3 inches long and without a top.

Mix up some plaster of Paris, fill the box with it and let it set. When it is perfectly hard and dry tear the cardboard box away from it, and on the narrow side of it, that is the one that is ³⁄₄ inch wide, mark out your initials, reversing the letters just as they are on type.

Take a sharp pocket knife and cut away the plaster from around the letters to a depth of ³⁄₈ inch, thus leaving the letters standing out in relief like type letters as shown at A in Fig. 81. Give it a couple of coats of shellac varnish[85] which not only protects the plaster to a certain extent but prevents it from sticking to the mold.

Now take this pattern to a brass foundry and have a brass casting made of it. When you get it file it up nice and smooth and be careful to keep the surface of the letters perfectly flat. This done, drill a ³⁄₁₆ inch hole in the center of the back of the brand to a depth of ¹⁄₂ an inch and thread it with a ³⁄₁₆ inch tap.

The next and last thing to do is to get an iron rod ¹⁄₄ inch in diameter, and 12 inches long, bend a ring on one end, thread the other end with a ³⁄₁₆ inch die and screw it into the brand, when it will look like B.

How to Use the Burning Brand.

—To use the burning brand put it in a fire and when it is about red hot, take it out and press it firmly on the wood you want to mark and your initials will be left on the wood as long as the wood lasts, nearly.

Stencils

A stencil is a piece of heavy paper or thin sheet of metal in which letters or a design are cut through with broken lines, and it is used for marking the letters or design on any smooth surface by daubing a color on it through the open spaces with a brush or sponge.

There are two kinds of stencils, namely (1) those used for practical work and (2) those used for decorative purposes.

How to Cut Stencils.

—You can cut your stencils in either (a) oil board,[86] or (b) in thin sheet brass or copper. Paper stencils, as those cut in oil board are called, are much easier to make than those cut in sheet metal and as they are quite durable they will probably serve your every need.

Cutting Paper Stencils.

—All you need to cut paper stencils with is a sheet of oil board and a pen-knife with a good, sharp-pointed blade. A stencil alphabet is shown at A in Fig. 82 and by taking a look at it you will see exactly where the lines must be broken to hold the letters together.

First mark out with a pencil the size of the sheet you want the stencil to be and then draw a line down through the middle to divide it into equal parts. For every line of letters you want draw a pair of lines across the oil board and have the space between them whatever you want the height of the letters to be.

When you mark in the name or word start with the middle letter and draw it on the middle line of the board and then draw in the rest of the letters to the right and to the left; by lettering the oil board or metal this way you will get the whole name or word exactly in the middle of the sheet.

To cut the stencil lay it on a smooth board and hold your knife just as you do a pen when you write but with your fingers a little closer to the point. Start at the top of each line if it is a vertical one, or on the left hand side if it is horizontal; hold the knife at a slight angle so that all the lines you cut will slant in toward the center of the letter and so bevel the paper. In cutting the stencil you can turn the sheet around to bring the lines into the best position for cutting.

It does not take much pressure to cut through the board but press down hard enough on the blade to make the first cut go clear through and never cut over the same line twice and also make the cuts run right up sharp into the corners. It takes very small skill to cut stencils but the chief part of the art lies in drawing the letters or the designs on the paper or metal.

Cutting Brass Stencils.

—To cut sheet metal stencils use annealed[87] sheet metal about No. 25 Brown and Sharpe gauge;[88] mark out the letters or design as for paper stencils and then cut them with stencil chisels. When you have the stencil all cut file the burr off of the edges of the letters or design with a fine file and file them at an angle so that all the edges are sharp. A practical stencil is shown at B.

How to Use Practical Stencils.

—A short, stubby brush, called a stencil brush and made especially for the purpose is the best kind to use to stencil with. Dampen it a little and rub it on a cake of stencil ink;[89] hold the stencil down tight to the surface you are to mark and then dab—not paint—the spaces in it with the brush.

How to Make Stencil Inks.

—Dissolve 4 ounces of shellac and 1 part of borax in a little boiling water and put in enough logwood to make it red if this is the color you want it, or blue carmine if you want it to be blue. Then add enough hot water to make it about as thick as cream.

How to Use Decorative Stencils.

—Art stencils can be used with good effect for certain kinds of decorative work, but it is especially adapted for putting borders on kalsomined walls. You can cut these stencils, see C in Fig. 82, after your own design or you can buy them already cut.[90]

Mixing Colors for Stenciling Borders.

—To make the colors for decorative stencils stir a very little moresco stenciling color[91] with some hot water; be careful not to use too much color or the effect on the kalsomined or frescoed wall will be too contrasting. Beautiful colors in half-a-dozen tints can be had for this work.