Branding
So, lots of people who make stuff in wood (going back a few hundred or more years) made a mark on the stuff they build (assuming it’s good enough). Usually in an out-of-the-way place, even one where you’d have to disassemble the piece to find it; like signing one of two faces before you glue them together.
Sometimes it was a simple stamp made with a metal stamp and a few taps of a hammer:
Sometimes it was a paper sticker, and sometimes it was branded:
This wasn’t done out of the same sense that triggers graffiti by the way – some guilds from the 17th century onwards made it mandatory to mark every piece a workman made. Not every guild, but enough that it was considered commercial rather than odd or vain.
Well. Not vain for them 😀 For me, it’s pure vanity, but sod it, it was fun. And these days with 3D printing and CNC milling machines, it’s no longer a very expensive process involving difficult custom forging, it’s dropping €30 to €40 on a guy on etsy and giving him a design and waiting for a package to show up in the post three weeks later from Hong Kong. Living in the future has some benefits 😀
So here’s the design:
Not terribly big or fancy (by today’s standards – I suspect you couldn’t readily make this back in the 18th century). M for me, big C for herself indoors, in a venn diagram with a small c for junior in the middle, a common baseline and a random tangent forming an acute angle. So it’s uber-smarmy-symbolic is what I’m saying 😀
But who cares? I have my own branding iron 😀
Simplicity itself to use – hold by handle, point blowtorch at head until hot enough, press onto wood and rock back and forth slightly, quite gently, and you leave a mark in about ten seconds. I don’t think it’d cope with any kind of high rate of production, but that’s fine, I don’t produce stuff very fast 😀
Yes, I’ll brand that sapele, no I won’t be doing that today. Have to finish working on it first.
That’s not too bad, it’s almost discrete 😀
And nice and clean lines too. Have to admit, wasn’t sure it’d come out that well, didn’t know how good the brass CNC milling machines had gotten. But no, it came out fine.
Now I just need to buy a bigger blowtorch. The creme brulee torch isn’t cutting it 😀