Fancy Cancellation Devices - Homemade

Yesterday I was sitting out on the front porch reading about fancy cancels and the different ephemera and materials and had a thought..."I bet I could make one of those?" I found the materials that was commonly used and carefully chose my designs. It is much more difficult than I had originally thought? It took quite a bit of time considering the simplicity of the designs. I now understand why "the circle of wedges" is so common! I, of course chose more intricate designs, although not by much but I'm happy with them. And to answer your thoughts -NO I will not do anything unethical with them. I just wanted to show my work and get your responses. So what to ya think?









The 6 point star (attempt):







Both together:

Cool. I imagine and X-acto Knife would be good and a Dremel would be excellent.

I bet they would make easy work of it but I just used my little pen knife that my Great-grandfather gave me on the cork one and a hacksaw on the wooden one. Thanks!

These are the antiquated tools I used to make the cancels:

This is an interesting tool that I have used my whole life. My Great-grandfather had it in his shed and it is designed to make use of broken hacksaw or bandsaw blades. It is from the NYCRR shops.





His depression era pen-knife:
I keep it razor sharp. It isn't valuable or anything but to me it's priceless.

Any chance to see the impressions they make? This is something I have thought of doing, so it is great to see someone else has gone and done it.

Not bad looking at all! I do a bit of wood working as another hobby of mine, so I can appreciate how much it time it takes to make the intricate patterns. Cork especially can be challenging to work with because it is so soft.




A Dremel would just tear the cork to pieces, what you need is a very sharp blade. And even on the broomstick you'd be better off using a small hand file than a power tool.

Without an ink-pad this is the best I could do. (My daughters playdough)

I'm going to have to get me an "ink-er" so that I can do some actual strikes on paper or a mock-up cover (adequately marked as such of course). I think that would be fun. I imagine that some purists out there really frown on these home-made devices because things could be forged and/or altered but I assure you I have no such intention of doing any such foolishness. It didn't even occur to me until hours later. Besides, most of the stamps that would require such a cork cancel would be immediately devalued and spotted immediately just due to ink types and qualities.

Hmmmmmmmmmm...now I have an excuse to tell my wife why I drank the entire bottle of wine in one night! Not sure what the designs wouldlook like afterwards, however! ;)

No doubt you could enlist her help . . . in drinking the wine.

Those are very cool! The star is a great design, well done!

Those are very cool! The star is a great design, well done!

I FOUND IT! I had to search for the word playdough! lol