Leaving a mark

The dial pad printer has arrived, which means the next phase of the project is starting to feel a little more real.

*Would love to know the path this thing took to get to Philly…*

I have begun experimenting with cliché development, trying to understand how cleanly I can create the plates, how much detail they will hold, and how the whole process needs to fit into the broader dial workflow.

In the middle of that, I decided to take Justin Laser’s Fiber Laser Ignite course to tighten up my understanding of the MOPA laser more generally. I have learned a lot by experimenting, burning material, adjusting settings, and making mistakes, but I wanted a more structured pass through the tool’s capabilities.

That has opened the door to a lot of small side projects.

I have been making horology-themed slate coasters, marking anodized aluminum cards for gifts, and even added a custom mark to a leather watch box for my son’s 8th grade graduation gift. He loves his Vaer dive watch, and the box felt like a nice way to make the gift a little more personal.

Not every experiment has been elegant.

I tested an old camping knife by etching one side and annealing the blade on the other. The result looked like the knife had decided to get every flash tattoo on the wall in a single sitting. Not exactly refined, but useful. The mark types behaved differently, the surface reacted differently, and the blade became a good reminder that “can mark” and “should mark” are not the same thing.

The larger point, though, is that all of this feeds back into the dials.

Every coaster, card, leather box, and overworked knife is another way of understanding how the laser behaves across materials. The pad printer may be the new arrival, but the laser remains one of the central tools in the workshop. The better I understand it, the more control I should eventually have over the parts that actually matter.

For now, the bench is a mix of cliché plates, test marks, gifts, and mistakes.

That feels about right.

Sidewalk inspiration