Re: Labels

Bruce

Many thanks for your interesting comments.

I was interested to learn that you had a collection of species as I have 
been working on building one up from seed over the last four or five years.  
I am getting there slowly.  Do you have a list of the species you still 
grow?  I am particularly interested in lacustris, at the moment, as it 
should grow here in Ottawa quite well.

Best wishes,

Ian

>%o Ian E. Effort
>
>    I was interested to hear how aluminiun label stakes with stickon plastic
>labels are being made now. many years ago I made hundreds of name stakes
>from stips of aluminium with the names stamped in by letter and number hand
>dies. Then smoothed by a few ahmmer blows on a steel plate to cut back the
>ridges thrown up by the die  but still leaving the gut in the metal. Next
>the letters were rubbed over with the best quality black paint I could buy
>(car paint) and immediately rubbed off by a rag. This left the letters full
>of paint and very easy to read. The The final operation was to bend the name
>portion of the stake over at a 90 degree angual so when the stake was pushed
>in the ground it could be easily read from a standing position. I should add
>I also cut points on the stakes with a hand shhear to make them easy to push
>into the ground. I still have some I made over 30 years ago still in use.
>This old they really should be shined up with emery cloth and repainted as
>not very much of the paint was still there - but the name could be plainly
>seen closeup. A friend of mine had accesss to scrap stainless steel and made
>lovely stakes from this metal that really stood out among the foliage. I
>expect it was hard on his dies though. 
>
>   Writing with acid on zinc also made a cheap but legiable stake that had a
>very long lifetime and are sold commercialy stuck on a wire. My wife liked
>these as she could make them herself and not wait forever for me to make the
>aluminium ones. It does take time and requires homemade jigs to hold the
>strips and space the letters -  they were 1/4" size but there are larger and
>smaller sizes. When I was planting iris I made temperory ones out of thin
>wood stakes about a foot long painted aluminium and merely wrote  the names
>on them with a heavy felt tip pen. Good for a few months but like to get
>them replaced before freezeup. Used ones I merely repainted the named part
>and it was ready to be reused. Very quick and easy - but temporary
>
>Gruce Richardson (near Hamilton, Ontario, Canada)  
>Bruce Richardson (near Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
>
Ian E. Efford
avocet@worldlink.ca
Ottawa zone 3
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