Hmmm...what's the best way to present somewhere between 26 and 50 stamps all around the ship?
The Trodat 4923 stamps are fairly small and we were concerned that if they were simply left out in various areas of the ship it would be very easy to lose track of them. The answer was some sort of stamping station.
The feature set we arrived at was:
- stamps tethered to the station to keep them from getting separated
- a sacrificial stamping surface to deter people from stamping on some random surface to test the stamp
- an obvious location for the stamp at the station to encourage people to put the stamp back where it belongs
- magnets on the stamp and the station for vertical (wall) mounting
- big enough to be seen but not so huge that packing dozens of them would be a lot of weight/volume
- not too expensive or time consuming to make since they will probably get trashed in a single use
The bases and stamp corrals were made from laser cut red mat board sourced from Amazon.
|
The practice pads were made from 2" x 3" sections cut from dollar store scratch pads and glued to the base with PVA glue. This didn't work well since many of the pads failed at the top edge and came off the base. A different construction will be required in the future.
Oh, and who chooses these colors? |
The stamps were tethered to the base with thread through an eyelet in the upper left hand corner.
The tether material was 0.8 mm waxed polyester bookbinding thread sourced from MH Leathers, a supplier who sells direct from China on Aliexpress. This thread was used primarily because it was red and we had it on hand. The other end of the thread was tucked under the plastic cap on top of the stamp. Not a very satisfying solution. |
Each station had an array of 12 mm x 2 mm rare earth magnets epoxied to the back to allow for wall mounting.
Gluing them on was a little tricky because the front of the station wasn't flat. The back didn't sit level causing the magnets to slide around on the film of epoxy. Supporting the bases on their edges with strips of wood held them level and stopped the sliding. |
Each stamp had a 25 mm x 2mm rare earth magnet epoxied to the back to allow for wall mounting.
In 2023 the magnets on both the stations and the stamps were hot glued on and it was a complete failure in service. In 2024 the epoxy worked fine for the the stations, but some magnets still came off the stamps with the bond failing between the plastic housing of the stamp and the epoxy. Some improvement is required. |
In summary, we managed to build stamping stations with all the features we wanted even if some of them need a little improvement.
What about build time? It turned out to be more than we hoped simply because there were so many components. Another area for improvement.
And the cost? That turned out fine. Although the materials totaled around $100 for 50ish stations, most of that was in the magnets which were (somewhat alarmingly) easy to remove from the stations at the end of the cruise in case we want to reuse them next year.
What about build time? It turned out to be more than we hoped simply because there were so many components. Another area for improvement.
And the cost? That turned out fine. Although the materials totaled around $100 for 50ish stations, most of that was in the magnets which were (somewhat alarmingly) easy to remove from the stations at the end of the cruise in case we want to reuse them next year.
And that's a wrap for JoCo Passporto 2024!