Need suggestions on difficult inscribing!

[Luke McFadden]

To make a long story short, I'm going to be stamping works onto 8 different pieces of wood. The woods will range from softwood to hardwood. I'd like the font to remain consistent throughout the different pieces. I read on LV that different sizes work better for different density woods.

(1) Is this going to be a problem? I don't want to buy 3 different sets of stamps.

My next problem comes from needing to do Greek letters. I'm not to worried about accents, the one's that are important I might be able to just do by hand.

(2) Where can I find Greek Alphabet stamps?!
(3) If this is to hard to do, what are some alternatives to stamping that would look good?

I'm making a relatively small 3 sided pyramid with 8 layers. Each layer being a different type of wood. (as side a goal, I'd like to move from one shade at the bottom, to another shade at the top... so dark to light wood, or vise versa).

So, I'll have English on one side, Greek on another, and maybe some symbols on the the other side. I'd really prefer that the wood be stamped, or something similar, but I realize this is going to be a BIG project.

(3 again) What are some other ways that this goal might be achieved while still looking great? Little metal plaques?

I appreciate any advise as I've never done anything like this before.

Thanks!

Luke

[glenn bradley]

"so dark to light wood, or vise versa"

Depends what it stands on. Base color should be opposite of the surface on which it stands to avoid the pyramid looking like it is "growing" out of the table (or whatever). If you end up with like colors for table surface and bottom "stripe" you could add a little foot to elevate the bottom surface off the table a bit to create a shadow-line.

[Luke McFadden]

"so dark to light wood, or vise versa"

Depends what it stands on. Base color should be opposite of the surface on which it stands to avoid the pyramid looking like it is "growing" out of the table (or whatever). If you end up with like colors for table surface and bottom "stripe" you could add a little foot to elevate the bottom surface off the table a bit to create a shadow-line.

Thanks for the post, I hadn't thought about that! I think it might be better to go from light (light yellowish color, basswood maybe) to dark.

But It might just be easier to work with the same type of wood, but with different stains? I'd like to have the look of smooth and even overall transitions between the different layers. Would using different coats of stain be the easiest way to achieve this?

On the other hand, I think I might like the look of having different species of wood in the changing colors as well.

Thoughts?

L

[John Schreiber]

I'm not sure I'm picturing what you are aiming at, but . . .

I doubt you will be able to find stamps with Greek letters, unless you order them from Greece perhaps. Even then, it's very hard to create even looking stamped letters in wood.

You might consider carving them instead, but that's quite a challenge too and especially challenging if you are trying to carve very small letters. Google "carving incised letters" to learn a bit about that.