Indented texture?

[Fox in the Stars]

I chip-carve and like to look at vintage chip-carved items on eBay for inspiration, but I notice that a lot of them have areas of a kind of matte indented texture. Here are some examples from current items:

item detail
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Does anybody know how this texture would have been done?

[kitaye]

If I'm not mistaken that texture is done with a stamp. You can grind the tip off a nail and use it as a stamp.

[teeburn]

Looks like stippling, pointillism to me. It can be done with a woodburning tip also. If you don't want the colour of the woodburning just use a cold tip or barely warm where it will give you the texture and not the colour. There are several different tips you can use to get the effect but probably the best would be a medium ball tip. Just depends on how large you want the stippling. One of my favorite backgrounds for woodburning too. Very effective and nice background for both carving and woodburning.

[Fox in the Stars]

Thanks! I tried the ground-down nail and the results look pretty good so far! ^_^

[Smokey]

Kolrosing

[Hi_Ho_Sliver]

I stacked up about 6 nails and glued them and put them in a piece of dowel....works good.

[Plain_Ol_Ed]

Or a bolt of the size you want. File the desired pattern or shape on the end. A lot of ways to do it. I had a bunch of brass rod of various sizes, so made stamps out of them.