The Making of Flametongue-- Ma Brand.

I like to mark my stuff as mine. I just do. It comes from having four other siblings, methinks. So I make my stuff mine, in as many ways as possible.

But I've had this idea in the back of my head, playing ping-pong with my other ideas. So I decided to slap it out. So here you go. Btw, it's worth mentioning that we're going to be playing with fire, hammers, and heavy utensils, not used for brushing teeth. So if you're afraid of burning the whole world 'round, you may want to reconsider. But if you're not, well hey, jump right in!

So I have great thanks for my Mom, actually. She let me misuse and defile one of her beautiful barbecue pokers. Thanks, Mom!

So I snatched up her barbecue pokers, a heavy hammer, and a glove. Why the glove? I actually forget. I've heard some people use them for protecting their fingers, but I usually use them for scaring off trolls (they love socks, but hate gloves, for some reason.)

After compiling my tools, I went to work, banging at the poker with the hammer. I did this by putting it over the edge of a table and whacking it with a hammer, really hard. You could probably skip this, actually; it'd be easier to bend it with your hands. For me, anyway.

So I forgot to take pictures of this (I'm a terrible person, I know), but I basically bent it a second time, going vertically from the handle. This makes the second side of the brand. Then I bent it backward, towards the first corner of the brand. You'll get something like in the photo, unless you're making a square.

I'd wanted it to be a triangle, but it had turned into a triangle...with a right angle. Annoying. But methinks this was because the barbecue poker was flattened, instead of round (also annoying. Oh, am I getting negative?)

So I heated my right-angle triangle in our kitchen stove, and tried it out. It worked, I suppose, but I was aggravated by the shape of it. So I cooled it and went back out to the workshop. I tried using a hammer, but the triangle was too tight to do anything, so I bent it with my hands. It slowly turned into the perfect brand I'd hoped it'd be.

Suddenly, a brand! As you can see, I had a little bit of fun on that wood.The metal turned from a silver color to a dusty iron color, which I am A-okay with. Flametongue came out pretty well, actually.

Whether you're marking your projects, branding your hangliding cow herds, or torturing your siblings, brands are a lot of fun to make. This was a quick-and-easy tool to make, which took my less than twenty minutes, albeit some of that I wasted on eating chili. Give me a break okay?

Slight note; If you use this brand in your house, make sure you have a bucket of water to dip it into, and make sure you have a vent or window open. I ain't paying your hospital bills.

So yeah! I've got more projects coming (some of them will involve Flametongue, don't worry), and I can't wait to post another Instructable! Thank you for reading!