These are a couple of leather stamps I’ve made using 20mm Acetal. I made use of Lightburn’s ramp feature to give some more strength to the walls, as they are being used in a 8 tonne hydraulic clicker press.
6 Likes
really nice.
do you moisten the leather slightly just before pressing?
does the acetal give off fumes when you burn it ?
thanks for sharing.
The examples in the photos werent moistened, if I was using a hand press I probably would have wet the leather, but not really needed in the hydraulic press.
There wasn’t much in the way of fumes, a lot less than when cutting perspex. When I opended the lid after the job had finished I couldn’t smell anything.
Nice job. I’ve been trying to convince my customer to use acetal, but they are happy with MDF 
I’ll show them your results, if I may?
Sure. I would have thought that Acetal or Derin are far superior to MDF, it probably allows more detail, less prone to compression damage, aren’t affected by moisture, etc. Yes the material is more expensive, but the results are so much better.
thanks for sharing that info julian.
very interesting , and a great looking result.
Varnished MDF is surprisingly durable, and when you’re only making ~50 imprints, is quite acceptable to them, but adds handing I can do without.
I’ll have to give it a try, I think I have some 18mm mdf around somewhere.
I use 4.25mm, varnished with 2-pack.
My customer uses a hydraulic press, but I don’t know at what pressure.
They last longer than his run with no obvious breakdown, although one leather he used did soften the edges a little
Wow, nice work, Julian!
Now, seeing that this uses an 8Tonne press to execute, I think we’re already at least 2 orders of magnitude out of alignment on this. Thanks for the info, but… I probably won’t be pursuing this further 
You can do it with a vice.
Try one in MDF first and see how it goes.
1 Like
Good suggestion, thanks!
I’ll put it on my ‘short’ list of the many things I want to try! 
I’m not familiar with this, what is ‘2-pack’? Do you mean some 2 part sealer/hardener?
2-pack or 2K is an epoxy-type varnish/hardener coating.
https://www.eastwood.com/1k-coating-vs-2k-coatings
I use a spray gun, if I’m doing a significant amount of painting, if not, I use Dulux duraMax for general hard-wearing coat, but any 2k/2-pack aerosol can does the same job.
I like it because it is interior/exterior, non-yellowing, and you can coat everything from paper to wood to metal.
1 Like