Knife stamp(hot stamp)

[cmac]

Have been looking to buy or possibly make a knife stamp. See a few range from $110-$180. What I would like is a 6-8 inch punch with script lettering(cm). Any info would be appreciated.

[Thumper]

cmac, Go to "anvilfire.com", and check into the "Guru's Den" chat area, lot's of smiths there and I'm sure one could point you in the right direction.

[ValleyBlacksmith]

cmac I see you're in Andover, near to my old stomping grounds of Rushford and Caneadea. Beautiful country thereabouts.
Down in that neck of the woods is a group of blacksmiths that meet monthly in various members shops, one in Hammondsport, one in Corning, one in Bath, etc. They move around a bit but mostly meet in Hammondsport in the hills above Keuka lake. Real nice bunch of guys. I used to attend their meetings for awhile but family obligations usually dictate my weekends and my wife, being a fiesty redhead can actually kill at forty paces with nothing more than a sharp look so I gotta behave...
One of the things that we did was making touchmarks as they are called. It was not all that involved and not hard to do really but not the sort of thing the average guy could follow the directions on and do at home without a fairly well equiped shop.
We used ORTS steel, very special stuff, a.k.a. F150LS, "old rusty truck spring", Ford F150 leaf spring. Nevermind all the fancy designer alloys and such some guys use in knifemaking, its overkill and the local junkyard has everything you need to run a smithy for a hundred years...
We took sections of leaf spring cut into roughly three inch squares and annealed (softened). Heated to welding temp and then buried in ashes or sand to cool very slowly which softens it so it can be engraved easily.
One of these is placed attop the other. The bottom one is the one you engrave your image into.
The top one gets a 3/4" hole drilled in the middle and four 1/8" holes drilled on three corners, the botom one gets the three corner holes too and they are tapped right through so allen screws can be put in here to hold the blocks together. Three holes and not two or four so there is only one way they can be put togther to ensure proper alignment.
Into the 3/4" hole goes a section of the head from a large allen screw, it fits right in snug, just the right size to fill the hole. This is a piece of allen screw head that has been cut off so you have a piece about 1/2" high with the hex hole, a ring basically, with the hex hole that an allen wrench fits into. Place that into the hole on the top block and tack weld it on top so the bottom of this ring as it sits in the 3/4" hole is flush with the bottom of the top block.
This serves as a guide for your punch, to present it right over the engraving in the bottom block. The punch is made from the appropriate size allen wrench to fit the screw head ring guide, about three inches long. Just cut the L off and you have the straight long side to use as the punch, this will be your actuall touchmark.
The top surface of the bottom block gats a coat of that blue metal marking stuff (sorry, the name of it escapes me right now) which is like spray paint. This is so you can see where your engraving will go on the bottom block. Place the top block on the bottom block and put in the screws that hold the blocks together. Now take a scribe and mark around the inside of the hex hole on the bottom block and remove the screws and take off the top block.
Now you have the hex marked on the blue stuff and this is the palce your engraving goes, anything you like. Use a dremel or make your own gravers from nails. At this this point you can see how small of an area you have to work in, trust me, its plenty big enough for a finished touchmark and will appear quite large enough on finished work like knives or other things you forge. Like I said, three screws are used so the blocks can only be put together the right way and the punch is centered over the image.
Heat just the face of the punch with an oxy acy torch, a pencil torch if you have one. You don't want to take this heat in a forge which would heat the whole punch, just heat the face to forging heat, bright lemon yellow, place into the hole guide in the top block, seated on the image you engraved in the botom block and strike it ONCE, no more than one hit. You're done and now have your touchmark.
The guys I mentioned are the Southern Tier Forge of the New York State Designer Blacksmiths. You can find contact info on their website, www.nysdb.org. Nevermind that the site appears to be not used very often, the contacts are current and you are certainly welcome and encouraged to attend their meetings. These guys are some very accomplished smiths and you stand to learn a lot there. Good luck...

[ValleyBlacksmith]

I checked the link I included on the New York Designer Blacksmiths site to make sure it was good.
Low and behold they have an entirely new site! On the homepage select "NYSDBinfo" next to "home" in the options across the top. A menu appears, select "about us" and another menu appears, select "Southern Tier Forge" and you will see the contact info. Good luck !!!