A leather stamp? Really?

I had an interesting request from my brother to make a very very small leather stamp. A bee 5mm from head to abdomen.

Not being one to shirk from a challenge I accepted.

I'm not sure how effective a leather stamp made of pewter can be but *shrug*.

First step, design the stamp.

I grabbed a photo of a bee, turned it into and SVG by tracing the outline. And extruded it onto a circle in CAD. I ended up filling in the wing detail. There was no way it was going to come out at 5mm long!

Then came the 3d print. Of course this one was made on the resin printer. It's so tiny! I was worried at this point that there was no way I would be able to pour cast something this small but carried on.

Mould making! I set the master in some sulphur free plasticine and coated the inside with a very fine layer of mould release. Then came some high temp silicone. Came out pretty good.

Then came the hard part. Gravity casting something this small (I don't own a centrifuge or vac caster) was always going to be a challenge. I poured many, repeat, MANY, tiny little bees until I finally got one I was happy with. Brushed it down and gave it a little polish to get rid of any oxidisation from the casting process.

I then made a handle out of some doweI I had lying around. There's a tool on there so the stamp can be removed to use with a clamp rather than pressing by hand.

Here's a potato video of how the release works. Hope you enjoyed.

And here's a photo of it in action. The top impression was made with a hammer strike. The bottom with a clamp.