Machined branding iron

[mklotz]

I thought it would be nice to have a branding iron to mark some of my wood projects. Sadly, the Garaj Mahal lacks the space for a forge so it would have to be machined. Fortunately, all my initials are letters composed of straight line segments so it wasn't too hard to construct a font that could be machined with nothing more than ordinary end mills into the end of a block of steel. A steel handle and a wooden file handle rounded out the simplistic construction.

If you decide to make your own, use a thinner piece of steel than I did. While my chunky iron holds the heat to allow multiple impressions, it takes a long time to get it hot enough to sear the wood.

[Frank S]

Marv the thicker block of steel helps to cut down on warpage.
You could have removed a significant amount of stock from the rear to reduce the heating time and energy required to reach optimum temperature