Hex Stamp Crawl - A 3D Printing Adventure

Or How I Obsessed Over Stamps For 72 Hours

I’ve been getting more into Kal-Arath lately, so I’ve been poking around

Castle Grief

‘s Substack. I came across a post where they were showing off hand-carved map stamps, and that completely pushed me over the edge. I’ve been toying with the idea for a while now, but seeing the results in action lit a fire under me. I might not have the artistic chops they do, but I can model pretty dang well.

I gave myself a few constraints for this project:

• The stamps had to be made from PLA—a common, easy-to-print plastic. I figured something like TPU might be better for stamps because of its rubbery feel, but it’s notoriously finicky to print. If I was going to put in the time to model and test these, I wanted the end result to be usable by anyone with even a budget printer.

• I’d model the classic terrain types you see in most fantasy RPGs: forest, grassland, desert, hills, arctic, jungle, swamp, mountain, and water.

• Timebox the whole thing to a few days—because if I’m being honest, I’ll go to great lengths to avoid actually sitting down to play solo RPGs (even though I really want to spend more time in Kal-Arath).

First Stamp Attempt

For the first go, I whipped up a quick forest stamp and printed it just a few minutes later. It was a simple design: a forest symbol inside a hex border. You stamp one tile at a time to build up a hex flower.

The results were... okay. The ink didn’t stick well, so the prints came out patchy. I also hadn’t designed a handle, which made stamping awkward and messy.

I shared the results in Discord, and

SilverNightingale

suggested a hex flower holder that could fit seven stamps at once—so you could stamp a full region in one go. I loved the idea and got to work.

In the new version, I tried to address the issues from the first attempt. I rounded some corners on the design to see if that helped. The result? Still pretty messy. Same blotchy ink, same awkward handling.

Also, while the flower holder looked cool, it had a big drawback: if you want a full set, you'd need seven of each terrain type—one for every petal. Not exactly ideal.

Second Stamp Attempt

For round two, I wanted to zero in on the ink problem. First I wanted to make the stamp as smooth as possible, so I sanded it with a 400 grit sand paper until the layer lines were gone. Next, I tried different types including some fountain pen ink I had lying around (and even raided my 5-year-old’s art supplies for stamp pads), but still ended up with the same blotchy results. I stopped by a local craft store looking for a nicer ink pad when I stumbled across acrylic markers. These were really cheap so I picked up a set and gave them a shot. The results were much better than ink pads:

The acrylic markers ended up being the tipping point. These worked so much better because you need to apply it to the stamp by hand so no areas are missed. Emboldened by the results I began experimenting with technique such as rolling the stamp, applying it flat, or wiggling it when against the paper. Long live the wiggle.

Final Stamps

Now that I was consistently producing good looking stamps, it was time to model the rest of the terrains and a handle (to maximize the wiggle).

To quickly swap stamps out, I inserted a 10mmx3mm magnet in each to hold it in place:

And as a happy accident all the stamps now stack and stick together becaues of the magnets:

Last but not least, the final results:

Closing Thoughts

This project was a lot of fun and I learned a lot in the process. The stamps are far from perfect and need some more love, but if you have access to a 3D printer and want to print these, you can find the models on Printables. I’ve released them as step files so they’re ready for remixing under a creative commons license.